


Cardinal King: Arc Three - Bright Future

by kyralih



Series: Cardinal King [4]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Drama & Romance, F/M, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:00:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 69,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22231438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyralih/pseuds/kyralih
Summary: The third arc of the reversed story of Sailor Moon centering on Mamoru Chiba, aka Cardinal King, and his four Heavenly Kings, guided by their guardian, Helios.There's no rest for the weary. After saving the world twice in one week, Mamoru and his Heavenly Kings, alongside Princess Sailor Moon and her Guardian Senshi, find themselves in the Space-Time Dimension and are set with a difficult task: Help save Rin's future.When their future selves failed, can they succeed?Third story in the Cardinal King Series [See Cardinal King Collection or Series]
Relationships: Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi
Series: Cardinal King [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/433282
Comments: 34
Kudos: 48
Collections: Cardinal King





	1. Doom and Gloom Girls

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again (￣▽￣*)ゞ
> 
> ♥♥♥ My inbox had been filling up with random kudos and follows and even a smattering of reviews from arcs one and two and I had this chapter 1/3 of the way written, so in the free time before this semester began, I started to work on this again! At the moment I have chapters 1-4 completed, but for fear of time repeating itself, I'm going to release one chapter a week so I hopefully don't go dark for months if my job and my graduate school stuff eats me alive again xD ((and if I finish everything I'll release them faster, hahaha...))
> 
> If you are unfamiliar with Cardinal King (a reversed AU centering on Mamoru as Cardinal King and the shitennou as his Heavenly Kings who protect the world against the Evil Queen and her Senshi Warriors), please use the Cardinal King Collection above to redirect yourself to the first arc (entitled simply "Cardinal King")! Also found in the collection is "Cardinal King One-Shots", a collection of stories set behind-the-scenes of the original work, filling people in about stuff going on in the background that Mamoru (our narrator) wasn't privy to at the time - and then there's the second story, "Cardinal King: Arc Two - Architects of a New World". This story starts seconds after arc two ends, so please give that a glance if you're confused about anything in the first chapter!
> 
> And now for some refreshers XD (I realize I didn't pick the easiest to keep track of names...)
> 
> \---Present Name (Last First) - Past Life Name - Superhero Title (accent color(s)) - Guardian---  
> Chiba Mamoru - Prince Endymion - King of the Cardinal Rose (gold) - Taishakuten, Lord of the Center  
> Hanada Kaito - Zoisite - King of the North (green/black) - Tamonten, Lord who Hears All  
> Moegi Yuu - Jadeite - King of the South (red) - Zochoten, Lord who Expands  
> Midori Nero - Nephrite - King of the East (orange/green) - Jikokuten, Lord who Upholds the Realm  
> Kobai Khalid - Kunzite - King of the West (blue/white) - Koumokuten, Lord who Sees All
> 
> The "new" Heavenly Kings uniform (all identical but for accent colors for the piping!) is a black version of their Shitennou uniforms from season one of Sailor Moon. All of them wear the jacket buttoned up and pants tucked into their boots; around the buttons there's some fancy thread embroidery and the top button is their transformation pendant! For the double colors above, the main gem is the first color with veins of the second veined through (representing their original colors veined with their new power base color). Mamoru's is black with a golden lotus blossom insignia in the center with mini colored gems at the cardinal points to represent his team! Additionally, in this form they always have a black-backed half-cape coming off their left shoulders, rather than having a full cape only appear when they're falling. --this form was totally inspired by a fanart pic of jadeite from pgsm, shh--
> 
> The Senshi are all in their base forms, except Usagi is Princess Sailor Moon!
> 
> *Anyway*, here's the first chapter!

**Chapter 1: Doom and Gloom Girls**

Energy whirled around them, pulling at all angles, ripping at his clothing and trying to pry him apart from everyone else, but he wasn’t going to let that happen. He held tightly to Rin with one arm and Usagi with the other and prayed that the pressure points on his back where at least two of his friends clutched at the material of his new uniform would continue. The cacophony that buffeted his ears was nearly too loud to hear  _ anything _ , but the spontaneous shrieks of the shapeshifters made his blood run cold. He was powerless as he was, only able to protect the two people in his arms, unable to even see what was coming in the crackling rush that surrounded them; all he could do was count the seconds and be prepared to act the moment this whirlwind released them. 

One of the grips on the back of his shirt pushed him forward before releasing, and moments later he crashed into the ground, the hand behind Rin’s head cushioning the kid’s fall as much as he could, their trajectory such that Usagi landed on top of them, and someone else or two besides. He opened his eyes and started trying to disentangle himself to prepare to fight off the enemies that followed them, but it was no use - he was near the bottom of the dogpile, Usagi’s hair complicating matters as white-gloved Senshi tried to get up while trying not to pull at the golden strands. He pulled Rin closer to protect him from well-meaning jostling and could not have been more relieved to hear East and North.

“Help them, I’ll keep an ear out,” North stated cautiously, his voice coming from behind them, closer to the direction they had come from. 

“Got it,” East said casually as he approached, then sounded from directly above as he politely offered, “Jupiter, may I?”

With her consent, followed quickly by a squeak of surprise, Jupiter was lifted directly off of them and Mamoru could look up and see more than thick brunette locks. Nero had taken a careful hold of the tallest senshi’s bicep in one hand and had lifted her with his other hand beneath her stomach, almost directly upward, keeping green-booted toes grounded until she was upright and stable and looking a little bewildered at having been manhandled so easily, and then, beyond that, her expression seemed shadowed by something else, but it was gone before he could identify it. Together the pair of them helped Venus to her feet, the blonde careful not to put any more pressure on Usagi than necessary, and then finally Usagi was able to sit up and tried to sweep her mess of long hair away, one of her odangos having unraveled somewhere in the journey. Venus gently helped her stand and started pulling her hair back with practiced ease, and while the senshi’s eyes were soft when looking at her princess, they were otherwise sharp and wary of their surroundings. Without words, Jupiter went off to take up a monitoring position and Nero offered him his hand to pull him to his feet before blue eyes squinted, staring off into the gloom in the direction opposite Jupiter. Once standing he quickly helped Rin to his feet, keeping the kid close as he looked around, with East close on his right. The Doom and Gloom girls couldn’t be far.

The world around them was stark and barren, the fog that hugged thick and close to the ground the only thing in any direction, illuminated by half-light that seemed to have no direct source. Above them the sky - if there was one - seemed to just fade out of sight, all green and grey and disconcerting.

“Some future,” East commented under his breath.

“This isn’t the future,” Rin replied defensively as he opened his palm to reveal the item he had been holding before: a small golden key. “It’s the dimension of the Space-Time Door,” he elaborated, holding the key aloft as a little pink light glowed from its tip; Rin moved it carefully and the light shone dimmer in one direction, brighter in another, then dimmer again. It must’ve been honed in on where he needed to go. The kid held it in the direction it shone brightest and confirmed Mamoru’s suspicions: “The door’s this way.”

He nodded down to acknowledge him and looked back towards North. “The others?”

“They dropped off when a couple of the shapeshifters got too close,” North stated. 

“Mercury and Mars, too,” Venus confirmed, “They’ll be able to find us again;” she stated with certainty, immediately moving on to ask Rin “how safe is this Time Door?”

“It’s safe,” Rin replied, “Its Guardian is on duty, and no one is more powerful here than Sailor Pluto.”

“Sailor Pluto?” Venus repeated, sharing a pointed look with Jupiter. 

“Do you know her?” Usagi asked, putting the final pin in her hair. Mamoru felt foolish for it, but he couldn’t help but notice she was still in the guise of Serenity; while the long gauzy dress suited her (and he had some fond memories with her in that dress), he was more used to seeing her in her school uniform or the short-skirted outfits she liked to wear - or, most recently, in her Princess Sailor Moon disguise - so the dress from memories that felt more like dreams, nostalgic and sweet, was like bringing a soft light into the gloom surrounding them. As she was, however, with nothing but a few layers of silky fabric between her and everything else, he felt he needed to be nearer to her, to guard her, but with Venus there she was well protected. Usagi caught him staring and winked at him; his cheeks flushed and he averted his gaze. 

Venus didn’t answer Usagi’s question at first, but took her slight hand and brought her closer to him - well, to  _ Rin _ in any case. “Let’s keep moving,” the leader of her guard decided, “they’ll deal with the threat and catch up. Unless you need to provide your men with backup?” 

She didn’t  _ necessarily _ state it as a slight against them, but she didn’t  _ not _ state it that way. Nero opened his mouth and took in a breath to answer but Mamoru put up his hand to stop him before he could let his emotions get away from him; the last thing they needed was another standoff, but he couldn’t let her make a decision like that without knowing the details. After seeing West and East fight off the ghoulish figures after their power upgrade, he wanted to believe that the West and South could handle themselves against a shapeshifter, but he did not know how well Mercury and Mars would fare. “They may  _ all _ need backup,” he stated, meeting in the middle rather than making it a contest of teams as he invited her sharp gaze, “The shapeshifters are strong and fast and powerful; each time we faced them we outnumbered them and still barely made it out in one piece. Let’s head back, regroup, and go for the door together.” 

She met his gaze coldly, “Just because your generals were unable to handle the problem doesn’t mean my senshi can’t. We’re going to the door; if you feel you need to support your people then meet us there.”

“Right,” East cut in, crossing his arms, “Makes complete sense.  _ We _ had problems with them so why would you? It’s not like we’ve tested strengths before at some recent point in time and proved --”

“East!” North snapped, storming over to interrupt where that conversation was heading before Mamoru had the chance. He understood what set Nero off, but digging up that part of the past was no way to cement a working relationship, and - even if they didn’t want to, which was not his intention at all - right now they had no other choice but to try to foster one. “I’m sure Venus only wants what’s safest for her Princess and doesn’t mean to insinuate anything untoward. _However_ , she is operating with out-of-date information, and, before she commits herself to a difficult decision, I believe Usagi-chan has something to share?”

All eyes shifted to Usagi, who looked back at Kaito, completely unaware of what he meant. Mamoru smiled. 

“Your transformation?” Kaito prompted quietly. 

“Oh!!” she lit up, twisting to face Venus head-on and take both of her hands and shake them excitedly, “I can transform!! I’m a Senshi, now, too! Here, watch!” She took two steps backward, held her hand out to the side, swept it gracefully up over her head, and called out “Moon Princess Power, Make Up!” In a flash of cool light, Princess Serenity stood before them no more, in her place standing Princess Sailor Moon, her uniform similar in style to Venus’s but for color and the addition of lace and pearl-string accents. She posed proudly before swooping in to grab Venus’s hands again and jump enthusiastically. “Isn’t it great?! Now I can fight with you guys!!”

“And  _ kick ass,” _ Nero supported, reaching out to offer Usagi a high five, which she happily supplied. “West said you sent that shapeshifter packing before; with all of us together we’ll zap ‘em back to whatever hole they crawled out of!”

“So you see, Venus, -” North explained, but Venus’s was obviously not paying him her attention. She had offered Usagi the faintest of smiles at being shown her transformation, but now she had only one target for her attention, and that was him: Chiba Mamoru. The gaze she pinned him with was a cold glare of accusation, quietly seething, her mouth a thin line that spoke volumes of her disdain. “- You don’t need to focus your entire attention on protecting Usagi-chan;” North continued, “she can, and has, fended for herself. We can go back for Mercury and Mars to ensure that we -  _ all of us _ \- get out of here and back to our own -” North froze, green eyes darting back towards the way they had come just as a spear materialized in his hand, his body language the only warning that Cardinal and East needed.

“Venus!” Jupiter shouted in warning, even as East dashed forward to meet the attack, his long brown hair and orange-backed black cape streaming behind him, stone-covered knuckles brought to bear against the winged changelings that barreled towards them. 

“Trident!” North reminded sharply, running to take the second creature with his spear held out to his side, but East countered - 

“Ramp!” 

North stopped, aimed quickly, and a burst of ice shot from the tip of his spear and landed between East and the approaching creature; East jumped, landed on the tip of the ice and springboarded higher, sailing towards the green changeling and crashing down on top of her, stone knuckles brought to bear in a punching motion. There was a cracking sound at impact, and the “Doom and Gloom girl” plummeted to the ground ahead of Nero, hitting the stony surface so hard that ejecta shot out around her; East landed a split second later in the crater with another loud  _ crack _ \- 

_ “Venus Crescent Beam!” _

Light exploded in the gloom and the laser-like mass of ionized energy shot out from Venus’s outstretched finger, aiming true for the body of the pink shapeshifter; it struck her, but the short-haired creature only twitched in her course, grinning widely as it called teasingly,  **“** **_Heading home so soon, Little Red?_ ** **”**

Venus fired again as Jupiter ran to intercept its course, skidding to a stop between the creature and then crossing her arms,  _ “Jupiter Thunderbolt!” _ she called, and lightning seemed to strike her before it snaking out towards the flying monster, hitting it dead-on, the energy pumping into the creature and crackling around it; it seemed paralyzed, its wings frozen and its body started to fall - but then they started beating again, and - with another sick grin that showed in its muzzle sharp, pointed teeth - it continued streaking towards them.

Sailor Moon’s elbow brushed against his sleeve; their eyes met, and without words, he bent, scooped up Rin, and dashed in a tangential direction as Usagi’s fingers hit the red gem in the center of the pearl tiara stretching across her forehead.  _ “Twilight Flash!” _ she called, and bright cold light reflected out into the eyes of the approaching creature. As he ran, Rin’s arms around his neck, he freed his right hand and summoned a rose, preparing to defend in case either of the creatures got too close. To  _ anyone.  _

East sprung out from the shallow crater only for North to jump in, spear first, and immediately pop back out again. “Frozen!” he called, tearing after East as they redirected efforts to the remaining monster. 

“They’re stronger,” Rin marveled quietly, his body twisted around to see. 

Princess Sailor Moon had fanned out in the opposite direction, across from them, as she skidded to a stop - the lace in her skirt jerking and bobbing into place - he saw the crescent wand in her hand and he steadied Rin and dashed just a little farther out of the path the energy would take.  _ “Moon... Princess…” _ she called, the silver crystal nestled in the crook of the wand starting to glow brightly in the gloom as it gathered its energy to strike. 

“Drop!” he shouted in warning, and North threw himself forward to tackle East to the ground.

_ “Supreme Thunder!” _ Jupiter quickly called again, momentarily paralyzing the creature again to keep it in place. 

_ “Halation!” _ Blinding light, sparkling with energy, erupted from the end of the crescent moon wand, spreading ahead of her in a conal shape up and towards the recovering creature. It screamed as it was held in place by the immense energy of the silver crystal, but grew suddenly silent as its body disintegrated, simply blown away with the immense power of the attack. As the energy petered off and the light faded, the little wings that had served as the shapeshifter’s tiara fluttered to the ground to top the pile of ash: the only thing left of an enemy that had harassed them so thoroughly before. Princess Sailor Moon lowered her wand slowly, her shoulders shaking as she breathed deeply from the effort of using her powers.

In the quiet moment following, East King, brushing his hair back out of his eyes from his position on the floor, enthusiastically called, “Yeah! What did I say?! She  _ kicks ass!” _ causing Usagi to smile proudly. North, shaking his head, got off East and turned to get eyes on Mamoru before offering the brunet a hand up. Mamoru approached, the danger over, dropping the rose as he let Rin slide back down to the floor. 

“It wasn’t just me,” Sailor Moon said, the wand disappearing, no longer needed. “Jupiter and Venus weakened it first; last time I tried that, she survived to mock me and fly away.” She grinned at her friends, and while Jupiter smiled back with a small, incredulous shake of her head, Venus’s smile was an empty thing - while outwardly fine, Mamoru noticed the way her jaw was set.

“You’ve definitely changed, Princess,” Jupiter said fondly, placing her hand on Usagi’s head between her twin buns, avoiding the little crown. “I like it,” she added softly, and Usagi’s eyes brightened. 

“Well, that’s  _ two _ down,” East stated, wiping his hands as though knocking dust from his gloves. “Two to go - the orange one and the purple one. Think West and South took care of them already, or should we circle back?” Nero looked back towards the crater expectantly, as though half-expecting them to materialize out of the gloom. Mamoru looked, too; Khalid had a sixth sense for dramatic entrances. Rin left his side to join Usagi, taking her hand in his. 

North quirked a brow with a deadpan expression of incredulous disbelief at their naivety, raised his wrist, and a quick twist of thumb and forefinger, both his and East’s communicators went off. 

Right. Communicators. He tried to make as though he hadn’t forgotten about them in the moment, adjusting the dials to noon to stop the beeping and open the channel as Nero muttered something about Kaito “being smart”. Khalid’s face popped into focus immediately, but Yuu wasn’t answering yet.

West King reported succinctly, “Purple shapeshifter down; Mercury has located Mars and South and we’re heading to intercept them now.”

“Do you want us to wait for you?” North asked, glancing at Venus warily.

“Not necessary,” Khalid replied, “Her computer can sense life-signs; we’ll rendezvous when -” he paused, looking off-screen.  _ “There.” _ He moved to shut the screen, but just before he did they heard another voice,  _ “Mercury Aqua Mist!” _

Venus nodded her head sharply. “That’s her screening attack. Kunzite will make short work of the remaining enemy and they’ll meet up with us soon.” She took a definitive step forward and walked in the direction Rin had earlier indicated, speaking with a tone that left no room to argue: “Let’s find this ‘Sailor Pluto’ and get out of here.”

There was no reason to argue with her - though East looked annoyed enough by her tone to try - so they followed, Rin holding the little key out ahead of him to periodically check its glow. He didn’t know what to say at first; there were so many questions to ask, but whether he should ask them or not was the hold-up. Should they know more about their future? … especially if Rin was here specifically to change it? Would Rin even be returning to the world he knew, now that his goal of awakening the senshi had been met? Were they the key, then, to avoiding the future he had seen in Rin’s past when he took his hand that day they met, only a week ago? … if they  _ were _ the key, what did that say of the Kings? Were they… He swallowed. … But then Rin had commented on how much stronger they were - just now, in the fight against the two Doom and Bloom Girls. Maybe they had changed, too, between the past Rin knew and the future path they were now set upon. Was that how time operated, though? Wouldn’t their present changing drastically from Rin’s past alter Rin’s present and potentially take him out of their time entirely? But that would, in turn, potentially change the reasons  _ for _ their changes and -- he had to stop thinking about that. The paradox potential for their situation nearly overwhelmed him, so he tried to put it aside and - failing that - put effort into coming up with distinct questions for Rin’s Guardian when they found her. 

  
  


They were joined by their missing party members not long after; Mercury and Mars wordlessly taking Jupiter’s place ahead of them, the green senshi dropping back to be closer to Sailor Moon, standing to the outside of the group and keeping an eye open, though less warily than she had before Mercury had joined them. East fell into place beside South and the pair of them started talking quietly but animatedly; judging by East’s shadowboxing, it was about the Doom and Gloom Girls. Helios glided in beside him, taking his customary place, but he remained quiet. 

_ “Where _ are we?” West asked quietly.

“The Dimension of the Space-Time Door,” North dutifully replied, “We are heading towards the door and its Guardian,  _ Sailor Pluto.” _

_ “Sailor Pluto?” _ Helios repeated,  _ “I wasn’t aware… there are more than the four?” _ the unisus looked expectantly towards Sailor Venus, apparently expanding his speech to include their team, but the golden-haired guardian remained quiet.

“They all had different missions,” Rin offered quietly, “Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury are the Guardians - they protected the Moon Kingdom and Princess Serenity from threats born within the solar system. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto protected the Moon Kingdom from threats originating outside the solar system.” The kid’s revelation was made with his head down, still staring at the key he held in his hands as he walked forward. Sailor Moon lightly put her hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to continue in his sudden willingness to answer questions -

“Where are Uranus and Neptune now?”

“Is there a Sailor Saturn?” 

North and South asked simultaneously, the latter holding his hand up to stop East’s story so he could better hear. East closed his mouth and started listening; Mamoru turned to Sailor Moon; Luna had mentioned these outer-system senshi in passing, but, if he remembered correctly, she had said they were  _ not _ reborn. 

Rin glanced up from the key to look at Venus, but she wasn’t paying any attention to him, so he looked over to the Kings. “Uranus and Neptune are gone, and Saturn is locked within her planet.”

“Gone?” North repeated, and Rin shrugged.

“That’s what Luna said.”

“You are in contact with Luna?” Venus asked, breaking her silence.

Rin nodded, admitting as though it were a secret, “Until a few months ago, when she went silent. I thought Helios had caught me and told her not to talk to me about that anymore, but now…” his hand gripped the key tighter, his voice catching as he continued, “I should have  _ said something _ , but I thought I was in trouble and -” he sniffed, “and I thought Helios didn’t talk to me about it because I  _ knew _ I wasn’t supposed to ask about them, but -” 

He had started to cry, and that was about all Mamoru could take of that. He took two longer strides forward to catch up to the halting steps of the redheaded boy and knelt to get closer to his level. Rin stopped and hurriedly let go of the key with one hand to scrub at his eyes with the heel of his palm and Mamoru’s heart ached just looking at him. “It’s okay, Rin,” he soothed, hesitantly reaching out for him, only then realizing he didn’t have a lot of practice with this part, or role models he remembered well for this. Rin shook his head, taking deep breaths and holding them to force the tears away in a move Mamoru knew only too well, and he overcame the hesitation and pulled the kid to him in a hug. Rin was stiff, still trying to be strong, but he broke down after a moment, both hands wrapping to lock behind Mamoru’s neck as he buried his face in the neck of Mamoru’s uniform.

_ “It’s all my fault,”  _ Rin cried,  _ “If I had said something, it wouldn’t have been able to get stronger, and they wouldn’t have -” _ he broke off in a hiccupping sob, and as his arms pulled Mamoru closer, he responded to squeeze Rin a little tighter. He looked up and Usako was there, one gloved hand placed comfortingly into the mass of red hair. They rode out the worst of it, though they could only guess what Rin had meant or what he was going to say.

“You weren’t supposed to know about the Sailor Senshi, Rin?” South asked, his tone carefully gentle; Rin took a deep breath and shook his head, still pressed into Mamoru’s collar, and South continued, “Why not?”

_“Ma--”_ he paused, catching himself before he continued, still speaking into Mamoru’s chest, “My mother wanted to tell me about them, but I got impatient.” 

“That happens to everyone,” East shrugged, coming up behind him, “and everyone makes mistakes, but not  _ everyone _ tries to fix them, so you’re already doing a lot better than most people out there.” Mamoru tilted his head to see him, and Nero caught his eye for just a second before looking back at the mass of red hair, “You done crying? I’ll give you a ride for a bit if you are, but if you’re not then you’re walking - my hair isn’t a handkerchief, got it?” Rin’s hold around his neck started to loosen, and Nero took that as an answer, crouching down to accept him and pulling his hair to one side. “Limited time only, kid. Offer to be the tallest person here expires in five, four, three -” Rin let go and stepped back, moving around without looking at Mamoru towards Nero, “-  _ wipe the tears first  _ \- two -  _ ow! _ Watch the hair, remember?” he chided, and Mamoru got to his feet as Rin maneuvered his arms and legs around Nero’s mass of wavy brown hair as East finished the countdown and shot to his feet to jostle Rin into holding on tight. “One and we’re off. Which way does that key point?” he asked, immediately setting off in the wrong direction.

The rest of them started to move again, heading in the correct direction as East continued to play dumb with Rin, heading one way then the other and cheering him up as the senshi gathered a little closer to hear an explanation. West offered what he could, succinctly explaining Rin’s sudden appearance and what he had admitted to on the rooftop not half an hour before - that he was Prince Mamoru Lord Endymion, son of King Endymion and Neo-Queen Serenity of  _ Crystal _ Tokyo, and he had traveled  _ back in time _ for the single reason of awakening  _ them _ . He added that the creatures they had just disposed of had been after him since his arrival, and, as East careened by with Rin on his shoulders, the kid holding onto his head as the King leaned precariously to one side in a half-run, North asked Mamoru to recall again what he had seen when he first took Rin’s hand, the context of his being from the future giving them far more insight than they had had before.

Mamoru described the scenes again: the first, with the woman alone atop a tower, the scene shaking with explosions all around her, lit from the front by a bleaching white light; the second, with the burning city in chaos and the oppressive feeling from above; and the third, with Rin being chased in darkness.

“Chased by the Doom and Gloom girls,” North surmised, “Was it here?”

He closed his eyes, recalling the image, and ultimately shook his head. “It didn’t have the mist and the openness this place has.”

“The burning city and the tower has to be Crystal Tokyo,” Jupiter mused, “and the bright light and explosions - could that be what caused the chaos in the city below?”

“Maybe,” Mars said, but continued in a different direction. “He said he came back to our time to awaken us, right?” she asked rhetorically, and South nodded to urge her to continue, “So, in his time, we were not part of any of this - now we  _ will  _ be, so will any of this come to pass, then? Especially with our knowing what we do now?” She turned to find Rin and East, “We should learn as much about this as we can, and that way none of this should happen and he should walk right back to a happy ending and whatever evil caused the chaos in those visions won’t have the chance to do that.”

“Hmn,” Mercury hummed thoughtfully, “but would it work like that? We did not awaken in Rin’s past, so Rin coming back to our time must have served as a catalyst for this change; if we fix whatever’s happening in his time before it happens, he would have no reason to come to the past to awaken us.”

“A paradox,” North nodded. 

“A what?” Sailor Moon asked, looking up at North and then him.

“A self-contradiction,” he explained, only too familiar with this chain of thought. “If Rin traveling back to our time caused the senshi to awaken, then they would already be awake in his time so he wouldn’t come back to ours to wake them up.”

“...So then they wouldn’t wake up in our time and wouldn’t be awake in his time so he would come back to our time and wake them up but then they would… oh.” Her brows furrowed cutely, and he wished he could make it simpler than that, or solve this outright, but that was the paradox. But then her expression cleared, “But he didn’t make you guys wake up, did he?”

They looked at each other, and Jupiter shook her head. “I… I was in my apartment. The power was out and the wind was howling and making the windows shake, and then it all died down and there was a bright flash of light and I… remembered. I knew it was you, and that you were in trouble.” 

Mercury nodded along, indicating a similar story, “I knew him from your introduction of him, but beyond seeing him in the arcade I never ran into him.”

“It was the Silver Crystal that awakened us,” Venus stated definitively, “not him.”

“Then maybe this paradox isn’t even a thing?” Sailor Moon suggested, “The Silver Crystal woke them up, not Rin, so…” her idea lost steam. 

“He’s already come to our past, Usagi-chan,” South said quietly, “I -”

But whatever he was going to say was cut off by two cries - one higher pitched than the other - and they all turned to find that East and Rin had traveled beyond their range of vision. West took off towards the sound, his sword in hand, and Mercury had her computer up and her fingers flew across the keys; he and the other Kings followed after West -

“North by northwest!” Mercury shouted in warning, “Energy’s building!”

“Get down!” Venus shouted, and behind him he heard a sharp  _ oof! _ as one of her senshi tackled Princess Sailor Moon to the ground. 

_ “Dead… Scream.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! 
> 
> BEFORE CONTINUING THOUGH, (*_ _)人 a pre-apology for potentially reusing things in this arc that I had used in the original arc XD I mixed and matched season elements in arcs 1 and 2 and so now I'm on 3 and I may end up reusing my favorite schticks for *teh drama* and I know that can get annoying but, like, I can't *not* so ... (シ_ _)シ
> 
> |･д･)ﾉ And please forgive any senshi characterization issues! They're stressed as hell and terrified of messing up again and trying their best with a princess who now thinks she's a powerful warrior and maybe she is a powerful warrior but what does that mean for them and their duty and life just got hard for them okay? poor bbs.
> 
> ヽ( ♥‿♥ )ノ follows/favorites/reviews feed this beast! I adore feedback - whether it's questions, reactions, comments, concerns, or corrections (hahaha.... I miss things ^^'), I love to hear from people when they read my stuff - it pushes me to write more XD. So if you have anything to say when reading or after reading, feel free to comment or send me a PM!


	2. Both In-Time and Out-of-Time

**Chapter 2: Time Warp**

Energy erupted all around them and he was thrown to the ground, a body landing on top of him with another gruff  _ oof _ as the attack flew over their heads.  _ “Honestly,” _ North grumbled, crawling to stay low as he got off, “Come back to life  _ twice _ and you think you’re immune now or something?”

He rolled his eyes for North; honestly, he hadn’t thought he’d be a target - he could barely make out the others ahead of them and took it for granted that an attack would be aimed at East and Rin rather than between the two larger groups of people. He got up to his knees to a  _ tsk _ noise out of Kaito and found, near his hand, a chunky, boomerang-like tiara with feathers - similar to the feathers that remained after Sailor Moon’s attack caused the Doom and Bloom girl to disintegrate, but this one’s extra accessory was familiar - and cold, with an impact crack moving through it. Not  _ directly _ a product of that blast. He gripped it to show it to North, handing it over before he got back to his feet - 

“You are forbidden…to pass beyond this point!” a voice rang out, the words strong at first but fading as the owner stopped to take a ragged breath. They were hurt. His eyes searching the mist ahead of them, he moved towards the sound of the pained voice, his hunch as to whom it belonged soon realized: “I am she who governs the Door of Time and Space, the Keeper of the Underworld, Sailor Pluto!” She panted, and he saw a prone figure through the mist ahead - “and all who violate this taboo shall be eliminated!” 

What had happened to her?

_ “Dead Scream!” _ she cried, and he barely managed to cover his face through the main brunt of the attack, feeling entirely foolish for not seeing that coming. The attack pushed him back a few feet, but he managed to stay standing -

“Cardinal King!!” someone yelled from behind, but the moment the attack let up he stepped forward again, practically able to feel the pain radiating off of her now. Close enough to see her, he started walking faster, calling the Golden Crystal to bear, stopping only when she maneuvered her staff to point directly at him, using both arms and the structure behind her to aim the staff and not fall over from its weight. She was bleeding, broken, barely able to catch her breath, but the garnet gem at the end of her staff glowed ominously regardless.

“Cardinal King, it doesn’t matter who you are,” she panted, pained, “No one can be allowed to break these laws. My mission now… is to eliminate you.” The gem glowed brighter, and he ran through his options -

“Sailor Pluto, wait!!” Rin screamed, and, to an outburst from at least two Kings, the kid came running out of the mist towards her, coming in as though he was going to hug her, but upon seeing her he skidded to a stop by her side, not knowing where he could touch, his face falling and eyes searching hers.

“Little Lord,” she said weakly, struggling to smile for him, but her gaze remained on Mamoru to keep her aim straight. 

“Please, it’s not what you think! They came with me here, don’t kill them!” he sat down beside her, reaching forward to try to find a place to touch her, but his hand hovered, “I’m sorry - this is all my fault!”

At his admission, the glow at the end of the staff faded and Mamoru started forward again, stopping to crouch on Pluto’s other side and his hands hovered above her body, too, but with a purpose that Rin’s lacked. Gently he called the crystal’s energy to bear and sent it out, aware from the start this time that he had no Earth beneath him to draw upon for extra power; he wouldn’t have enough to heal her completely, but he could stabilize her and mend the worst of it. She’d have scrapes and bruises and she’d need to treat newly healed bones gingerly for a time, but that would leave him with enough personal energy to continue to function. As he worked, everyone - slowly - closed in. At a silent request from the mysterious senshi, he moved his focus to the arm closest to Rin before returning to the more serious internal injuries, and Pluto reached up with that hand to take Rin’s, patiently waiting for him to continue.

“I’m sorry I broke my promise,” Rin said, swallowing hard. “You told me not to tell anyone, but they protected me and were pulled in with me - it’s not their fault, it’s mine!”

“Little Lord… where have you been?” she asked, the emphasis on her words having implications beyond a simple ‘where’.

Rin looked down, his free hand clenching the fabric of his school shorts, the elementary school uniform looking completely out of place here. “I thought… if I could awaken the Sailor Senshi in the past, they would have been stronger, and they could have-”

Pluto squeezed his hand and he quieted before he could say what he wanted from them in his time. “That’s not how it works,” she gently chided, “and you would have known that if you had talked to me about it. You broke a promise to me, you stole a time key and traveled to the past without asking me,” she scolded, and Rin hung his head lower, but then she released her hold on his hand to put it on his cheek. “I’m glad you’re safe, Little Lord. Please don’t ever make me worry like that again.” She moved her hand from his cheek to the top of his head to weakly ruffle his hair before dropping her arm back to her side. She closed her eyes solemnly before opening, moving her gaze across everyone gathered there. “Please forgive the rude way I treated you, after you were so kind as to bring our Prince safely home.”

“You were only doing your duty,” Venus replied, and he was glad that another senshi had answered; he felt it would resonate more.

“Please, Sailor Pluto,” North asked, “What happened here?”

“I failed,” Pluto stated, leaning back against what Mamoru now saw was an elaborate arched door, tall and intricate and imposing. “Through the use of one of my own keys, six entities escaped to your time and changed the course of your history,” Rin’s other hand joined his first in clenching his shorts. The six had been him and his attackers - the Doom and Gloom Girls. “And, not long ago, I was attacked by one such entity as it attempted to use the door.” He looked to North, and North held up the broken tiara.

_ “That’s _ what I tripped on,” East commented; South reached up as though to clamp the brunet’s mouth shut, but East caught the hand and  _ quietly _ held it at bay.

Pluto nodded, “But as I destroyed it, a second being defeated me and made it past into Little Lord’s time.”

“Another of the Bloom Girls?” Jupiter asked.

Mercury shook her head, “She had said six entities had escaped to our time - Rin and five others.”

“With Pluto taking out the last, the Bloom Girls are gone,” Mars stated, running with Jupiter’s recollection of their name. North looked like he wanted to correct them, but with Mars’s next question, his mouth shut thoughtfully: “What was the last, then? What else came with us?”

Pluto looked up, staring at the door behind her, “It must have been hiding in one of them but now…” she shook her head, clearing her throat. “It is no longer your concern; it passed through your time without causing harm, despite the damage it might have done if it had stayed. And the other…” she pressed her lips together, and, breathing easier, changed the subject. “Thank you for seeing the young Prince to me,” she said, sitting up straighter. To Mamoru, she said, “And thank you for your help, Cardinal King, despite everything.” She put the butt of her staff to the ground and used it to help herself stand, drawing everyone else up to their feet. “If you give me a moment, I can return you to your time -”

“But what about Rin?” Sailor Moon interrupted.

“And the “other” you mentioned?” North added. 

“Without the creatures that were chasing him, he should be able to make it back home unharassed,” Pluto said, putting one hand on Rin’s back supportively, “and the other is not your responsibility. You have just overcome an enormous obstacle and saved your world - take the time to celebrate your victory, and your reunion,” she said, glancing towards the senshi.

“Getting home wasn’t Rin’s problem,” Sailor Moon pressed, shaking her head, vocalizing the unease Mamoru felt at the mere mention of turning back now. Pluto had said that what Rin attempted, heading to the past, ‘didn’t work that way’, so that meant he was going back with nothing having changed. Those visions he had seen had still occurred.

“Rin came to our time for back-up, right?” Mamoru asked, “Even if he didn’t get it the way he had planned, he’s still got it.” Rin’s head shot up, red eyes bearing into his in a mix of shock and hope that cemented Mamoru’s hand in this. “What do you say, Kings?” he asked rhetorically, holding the kid’s gaze reassuringly.

“I’m up for it,” East declared, playing along, “Sure, we just saved the world  _ again, _ but I woke up from a prolonged nap and I’ve got a few new toys to play with, so why not?”

South nodded. North, his arms crossed in front of his chest, rolled his eyes at East, but shifted his weight to the foot closer to Mamoru, nonverbally showing his support of the idea. He sensed West’s gaze and looked up, not sure what to expect, but all he said was, “I go where you go.”

“I’m coming, too,” Princess Sailor Moon smiled, “I’ll help you, Rin -”

_ “Princess!” _ Venus hissed, taking Sailor Moon’s hand and pulling her back, the other three moving to keep up with them.

“One second!” Jupiter smiled brightly, waving a hand at them before joining a whispering huddle, her expression immediately dropping into something more serious. 

Not one to wait, North asked Pluto, “So, the ‘other’?” 

“A new host,” Pluto replied, and with that, the door behind her started to open, “which means there isn’t much time.” She paused, taking a key from her belt, and handed it to Cardinal King. He took it. “Use this key and pray to Chronos, and you will return to my side. The door is open to you.” She stepped aside, and Rin reached forward, taking his hand. “Please watch over Little Lord, and do what you can.”

“This way, Mamoru,” Rin said, pulling him towards the light that spilled out from between the enormous doors. Helios joined them, his friends right by his side as they walked through the door, into the future…

  
  


...and arrived in a hellscape. 

They were standing on a rooftop overlooking a city that - at one time - must have been beautiful, but now only the geometry of its layout gave the illusion of grandeur. Everything was blackened, burned, twisted, frozen in a half-melted state, including the ground beneath their feet. South took a few steps back towards a more stable surface and the metal beneath him stopped creaking. Smoke hung in the air like a miasma, and the streets below looked blasted, lined with spent matchsticks that must once have been trees. It was horrible, and it was quiet. 

“Rin, is this…?” North asked, and Rin just held his hand tighter in response. 

_ “The Palace?” _ Helios said, his question-like suggestion drawing their attention away from the devastation at their feet and towards the crystalline structure in the middle of the city. Piercing the sky, it would have been breathtaking, were it not for its surroundings and its blackened exterior.  _ “We should get to the Palace,” _ he said, with less uncertainty. It sounded like a plan - the crystalline structure was the only thing around that wasn’t melted.

“Is the Palace safe, Rin?” West pressed, holding out a hand to stop anyone from moving yet.

Rin nodded, “For now. …so long as you stay inside.”

“Well, guess now’s as good a time as any to see if these new capes work the same as the last ones,” East said, stretching out his arms to either side of his body and then over his head as he approached the edge of the building. “I’ll be guinea pig: I’ll turn it into a crater if I don’t slow down -”

North released a long-suffering sigh, his right hand to his forehead, “Or you could use your new  _ trident _ and slow your descent  _ that way.” _

East turned, mouth open in a smile and his finger touching his nose, pointing at North, “See,  _ this _ is why you’re the idea guy!”

“Is it  _ really  _ that hard to--?!?!”

“We’re here, too!” Princess Sailor Moon exclaimed, suddenly appearing behind them, startling everyone. North jumped forward and spun to face her sudden arrival and in the process fell off the edge of the building; West lunged after him, catching his hand before he fell too far, but in the sudden materialization of  _ everyone _ on that one rooftop, the surface began to creak and snap beneath them.

“Capes work!” East’s voice echoed up between the buildings, and with a nod, West and North released their grip on each other and North fell. West turned and reached for Rin, and Mamoru let go of the kid’s hand. Rin looked up at him before letting go, too, and taking West’s hand before both of them went over the edge. Mamoru pulled Sailor Moon in, keeping her close to the side of his chest that had the half-cape, just in case, and turned to see that the other senshi were alright - “Go!” Venus cried, and he saw South take Mercury’s hand and South waited for him to go before they went. Frowning at the idea of leaving them behind, he jumped over the edge, believing the structure of the roof to hold if there were only three there as opposed to ten - but he needn’t have worried. On the way down, he passed East going back up, standing on one prong of his upended trident as it rose through the air on pillars of stone. East flashed him an okay sign and leaned on the staff of his new utility-weapon, trying to look casual as he appeared over the edge of the rooftop. He couldn’t help but shake his head.  _ Nero. _

They alighted on the ground no worse for wear, and Rin was immediately back, holding his hand tight. West had his trident touching the edge of the building, veins of metal snaking their way up to reinforce the collapsing roof, but he stopped as East, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus appeared at the top of the column of rock East had created. In a series of smaller pillars made by East jumping and creating one at the last moment, the four of them were soon on street level and there was a new circular stairstep feature in the middle of the road leading to the top of the nearest highrise.

“So, that Crystal Palace?” East suggested as Helios casually coasted to their level, his attention towards the center of the city and the structure there. 

“Rin said it’s safe,” West clarified, dismissing his new weapon as he took point, and Venus released a sigh and joined him, Mercury falling into place behind her, mini computer open and blue visor across her face. Jupiter was on their right, offering him a smile, and Mars was on their left - distinctly  _ not _ offering him any sort of friendly expression as she peered down side streets as they passed them. The Kings fell in around them, their organization less rigid. 

“Mamo-rin said he needed the Sailor Senshi,” Sailor Moon stated with a smile, explaining their sudden appearance, “So we’re here to help.”

“Mercury?” Venus prompted sharply, voicing an apparent disagreement with the situation.

“The source was above the city,” Mercury diligently reported, “and the readings show the char is slightly irradiated.”

“Irradiated?” North repeated, clarifying, “as in  _ everything around us _ is emitting high energy radiation?”

Mercury nodded, and Mamoru clenched his jaw, wondering if the Golden Crystal would heal any complications that may arise from that. “Senshi aren’t affected,” Rin stated, and he saw Jupiter relax a bit, “And Helios didn’t think the Kings would be either, but he’s sure the Golden Crystal would have healed any damage done, regardless.”

East caught up to him, gripped his shoulder and shook him in over-the-top affection. “Thanks, Mamoru!” he cheesed, “Taking care of us so we don’t get  _ cancer, _ you’re the best.” Mamoru rolled his eyes, though he was glad that Nero was so willing to act out to attempt to make things seem a little less dire. 

“Rin,” South asked, his voice purposefully light. Rin gave him his attention as they walked, though his hands were still firmly holding on to his and Usako’s. “When you said Helios ‘didn’t think’ the Kings would be affected - what did you -”

**“Well if it isn’t Little Red!”**

The direction South was moving with his question was one that Mamoru had let slip past when he was thinking about the implications of the radiation, and uncertainty came with the realization of Rin’s use of past tense - but then a person was materializing out of the pavement ahead of them and those thoughts were thrust aside to deal with that. West rushed towards the assumed enemy with his sword drawn -

_ “Behind!”  _ Helios and Mercury said as one, and Mamoru released Rin’s hand to spin and face it, trusting Princess Sailor Moon to protect the kid for the moment, a rose coming to his hand and snapping into his sword. Another person - a male with silver hair, silver makeup, shining silver sleeveless shirt, and pants - was sliding out of the metal surface of a building, grinning -

**“Long time no see, Little Red!”** he cheered, but upon seeing them he tilted his head to the side, and his hair dripped onto his shoulder as his grin turned into a smirk as he recognized them,  **“Didn’t we kill you already? - Oniwabandana, didn’t we kill these guys already?!”**

West hissed in disappointment and the woman who had appeared out of the pavement was now behind them with the other, appearing from the head down as she emerged out of the pavement effortlessly, revealing an outfit straight out of old ninja films.  **“Well, isn’t this interesting, banban? Though it wasn’t** **_us_ ** **specifically that killed them, was it?”**

_ Killed _ them?!

**“You get what I meant - like the** **_royal_ ** **‘We’ - Ferrocerium, Staballoy, Tethys, whoever it was.”** He paused, finally fully emerging from the building, and, beside him, North’s spear materialized.  **“They’re going to be** **_pissed_ ** **when they find out you guys were up and around again.”**

_ “The Palace will be safe - watch out for Rin!” _ Helios warned,  _ “He, Cardinal King and Sailor Moon may be targets!” _

Where was he getting that information?!

**“Think we’ll get their perks if we take them out this time?”** the silver guy asked, his lipstick running down his face as he grinned at his accomplice.

The ninja produced throwing stars,  **“Only one way to find out, banban. And remember, Solder, don’t kill the kid.”**

**“Accidents happen,”** Solder replied and melted back into the metal in the wall -- until Norths’ spear landed in the metal wall beside him and froze his body in place, ice spreading all around the impact site in a sheet.

“Woops,” North deadpanned, his whip appearing in his empty hand, and then he ducked, pulling South out of the way as two throwing stars streaked through the air, bouncing off the pavement near where they had been. 

**“Oh, dear, banban,”** the ninja called, now floating above the street. She fanned her hands and they filled with more sharpened shuriken. One brow quirked, she rose higher, and Mamoru looked around for any sort of shield they could use -  **“Looks like I’m outnumbered.”**

_ “Run!”  _ Helios shouted,  _ “She can replicate!” _

In disbelief, Mamoru’s gaze shot back up to the floating form of their enemy; she blinked out of sight once and suddenly there were two of them - twice, and there were four. Three times, sixteen Oniwabandanas,  _ all armed -  _

“Mercury Aqua Mist!” Mercury cried out and they were surrounded in a freezing mist that hid them from the enemy, but also from each other. He dropped his sword and spun, reaching for where he had let go of Rin, but the kid wasn’t there anymore -- he dropped to touch the Earth, spread his hand on the pavement and reached out to find him through psylocation - 

“I got the kid!” East called from somewhere to his right -

_ “Quiet, or she’ll find you! Head to the palace!” _

Rin’s glow was right with Nero's - which was no longer green, but orange? - and Usako was with Jupiter and - he pushed himself up and started to run alongside everyone else - he assumed Kaito was dark green now because a soul that color was right where North had been, and Yuu was red now instead of green, and there had been no pink Kunzite’s shade, so Khalid was probably the light blue glow? The senshi’s colors were all exactly as he remembered them being - jewel tones of green, red, blue, and yellow - and Usako’s silver crystal color was the same, so it was just the four of them affected? Did it have to do with what happened on the ship? The Shitennou? Occasionally, as the enemy threw her throwing stars in at them in a shower of knives and Mercury shielded them from sight again, Mamoru would reach out with his power to double-check that everyone was still keeping up and would double-check that the colors hadn’t been a fluke.

_ “The palace is just ahead!” _ Helios announced,  _ “East, get Rin to the front!” _

The mist ended with meters to go before a solid wall of clear crystal jut straight out of the ground ahead of them; East put on some speed to get ahead and, as he and Rin approached, a tall set of elaborate doors started to materialize, opening for them. East and the kid disappeared inside, followed by Jupiter and Sailor Moon. Venus and West waited to usher everyone else inside before they entered. 

**“There you are, banban!”** tens of voices said as one, and Mercury hesitated at the door, but Venus pushed her inside and reached for Mars. South turned, summoning his trident, and a spray of fire followed the arc of the weapon, causing the enemy to blanch away from it, letting them slide across the crystalline surface to enter through the door without the rain of shuriken flying towards their unprotected backs. The moment South and West crossed the threshold, the last of them, East slammed the door shut and they heard hundreds of pieces of metal bounce off the exterior.

All of them panting to catch their breath, Mamoru approached Mercury and held out his hand. Behind him, he heard North complain: “I hate… long distance… running…” and he coughed; East, panting just as hard, eloquently returned, “Nerd.” Mercury hesitantly took his hand, as though to accept a handshake, and as he directed healing energy into her he quietly thanked her for providing cover, mending the cuts she had acquired. She nodded, accepting his thanks, and returned the sentiment for healing her. “Do  _ either _ of you…” South asked shrewdly, standing straight and staring in towards the main Palace, “have  _ any _ sense… of setting?” Neither Usako or Mars had any injuries, probably due to Jupiter for the former, and maybe blind luck for the latter, but that meant he turned to Jupiter next, and, finally, offered to heal Venus’s small array; she grudgingly let him, though she stared pointedly into the castle instead of anywhere near him while he sent the energy through her. 

Everyone’s breath coming easier, Mamoru finished up with healing his friends and offering his hand to Helios, who rejected him, eyes glued to the interior, and, finally, Mamoru looked in, ready to face whatever came next. 

Rin waited for them in an antechamber - an enormous room accented in gold and alabaster stone with intricate patterns and artwork, columns that stretched to the vaulted crystalline ceiling. It was indescribable -  _ breathtaking  _ \- and he paused to take it all in when they reached the middle of the room; their reflections were hazy on the polished floor, but the colors of the senshi’s uniforms and the black of theirs intermingled in the crystalline dome above them to create rainbows of light and darkness across the room. There were six exits to the room; Rin’s red hair stood out in the entrance to one particular direction, and he followed. Sailor Moon caught up to him and took his hand, and he held hers as they followed him down one long hallway and out into a chamber even bigger than the first, separated into sections by crystalline walls and drapery in silver and gold, highly decorative but having no other apparent function. Rin kept moving and they followed, until he paused, looking towards an archway expectantly. They waited for something to happen, but then Rin kept moving.

“Where is everyone, Rin?” South asked quietly, and the kid hung his shoulders until - 

“Sleeping, for now.” 

They all looked up to find the source of the sound, the voice familiar but completely unexpected - and found in a faint beam of light a ghostly figure of a young man with broad shoulders in white robes. His hair hung around his head like a cloud, at once straight and curling and  _ floating, _ despite the rest of his clothing apparently following gravity’s pull without question. His sleeves were long and semitransparent, cuffed in dark blue silk that matched the belt on his opaque robes and the lining of the split front and back of his long shirt and the slippers on his feet; there were five golden, tasseled pendants in a ‘v’ across his upper chest, two golden chokers visible through the transparent material of his collar, the material there a metallic green that matched accents on the shoulders of his tunic. He stood tall and solemn, and as his honey-colored eyes staring solely at Rin across the distance, his hair moved to show a garnet-colored gem in the middle of his forehead. But, most telling - more than the garnet gem and purple-silver hair and the voice and the intense familiarity Mamoru felt, the golden horn that sprouted from the middle of his head left no question as to who it was, just question as to  _ how _ \--

Rin ran over to him and reached out, only to stop, pull his hand back, and bow his head. “I’m glad you’re home safely,” the ghostly figure said, going through the motions of putting his hand on Rin’s head. “Your journey to the past was a dangerous one… but as a Prince, Little Lord, you made the right decision.” He removed his hand to place it on his heart and to the rest of them he bowed. “Welcome to Crystal Tokyo, and to the Crystal Palace.” Straightening, he looked out across the empty room and continued, “though I wish it had been in better circumstances, rather than the midst of battle… I… didn’t want you to see a future like this.” He looked away from them, motioning them forward, and Mamoru took the first step, following the impossible specter to see where it would lead. “I apologize if my form has startled you - my body is in Elysion, locking the sacred ground from within, less they find it; just think of this as my ghost walking around without my body. I am High Priest Helios,” he turned, looking over his shoulder at the unisus that flew on Mamoru’s left, “One and the same.”

Helios… was human? Well - that he  _ had been _ a human made sense, but he - how had he never thought to try to remember him as he had been before… but he was going to be human again? His unisus form wasn’t permanent? 

_ “You’re the one that’s been talking to me since we arrived?” _ Helios asked, and Helios - High Priest Helios,  _ human _ Helios,  _ ghost _ Helios -  _ other Helios _ answered: “Yes. It was easiest to make a connection to you, my past self, through telepathy rather than attempting to explain myself to anyone else.” He paused, turning to Rin, “Little Lord, have you made your introductions?”

Rin nodded, and South piped up in his defense, “As soon as West figured him out.”

Helios smiled, “Good. I trust it was gracious?”

Rin nodded again, and this time North backed him up, “A little disconcerting, but he was polite. Now, when he said he was the son of  _ King Endymion _ and  _ Neo Queen Serenity,  _ how many generations are between him and  _ our _ Mamoru and Usagi-chan?” 

“Just the one,” Helios replied, going down a short set of crystalline stairs, though he made no sound and caused no reflection in any of the walls surrounding them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Usako blushing, which made him blush, the whole ‘just don’t think about it’ idea completely lost at that point.

“So Crystal Tokyo is…” North trailed off, as though trying to lead Helios to an answer, but the question wasn’t entirely obvious. He tried again, “Just  _ when _ are we now? How far in the future? Did this much change happen in…?”

Helios didn’t turn around at first, and Mamoru thought he saw his shoulders shake once before he replied entirely seriously, “Zoisite, you do not want that going through your head on top of everything else. Aging works differently now; thanks to the combined powers of the Golden and Silver Crystals, you all generally stopped aging in your mid-twenties. The rest of Tokyo followed suit once Endymion and Serenity ascended the throne, and in the time since, all citizens of Earth have enjoyed lifespans much longer than any had thought possible in the past. That being said,” Helios stopped, looking out over a connected room, and Mamoru moved to the edge to see what he saw and froze. 

In an antechamber below them, on eight raised pedestals, was everyone. His Kings, lifeless, their bodies carefully arranged, arms straight by their sides. The Senshi, too, were arranged there, their hands over their stomachs peacefully. 

“All of that may end if we cannot put a stop to Metallia.”


	3. Crystal Tokyo

**Chapter 3: Crystal Tokyo**

“They’re only sleeping?” Mamoru asked in the silence, his eyes concentrating on the lifeless bodies of his friends in the room beneath them, staring hard to see the rise and fall of their chests to catch their breathing, not quite brave enough to use psylocation and find out the answer definitively. This was why Rin had used the past tense when he explained the radiation. What had Pluto said? Anything about reversing this? Fixing this?

“Comas,” Helios replied, and Mamoru released the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Comatose was still alive; though, as he found out with Usako, it was not a state the Golden Crystal was successful in alleviating. But they were alive and, given enough time, they could recover.  _ Would _ recover. They just had to give them that time. 

“Where is Serenity?” Venus stood at the edge of the balcony, one hand gripping the railing as she stared down at her future self, only then turning a hard gaze on human-Helios. 

“Resting,” Helios reassured, holding up his hands placatingly. “The last battle took a lot out of her, and the subsequent small scale attacks on the survivors by agents like the two you ran into earlier are wearing her down, but there’s not much we can do to alleviate it - we opened the Palace as a Keep and hundreds of citizens came to us for safety, but one of  _ them _ made it through and pulled off an attack right beneath our very noses - it was unsafe to continue with such measures, especially after the last guardian -” he cut himself off. “We did our best, but our best wasn’t good enough, and Serenity and the citizens of Crystal Tokyo are paying the price.” 

“I thought Rin came to our time to awaken us?” Jupiter asked, “But… we’re already awakened here?”

Helios - both of them - turned to Rin, who wouldn’t venture into the space at all, instead standing in the outer room. “Rin?” the High Priest prompted. 

“I… messed up,” Rin said to his toes, and at a slight disapproving noise from human Helios, he straightened and looked right at Jupiter to say, “I made a mistake. I meant to awaken you guys before the Archons arrived, so that you’d have more experience with fighting and you would have already been awake when the attacks started happening, but I miscalculated and got there too late.”

“Too  _ late?” _ East marveled, “You came  _ the day we defeated Diana, _ any earlier than that and you’d’ve been  _ fighting _ Senshi instead of attempting to get Usagi-chan to bring them back in on the action.”

Human Helios’s expression changed, his brows furrowing momentarily before he locked his eyes on Rin. “But you arrived too late?”

“The Archons attacked  _ two days _ later,” East continued, “They weren’t even out of the  _ hospital _ by then.”

Rin kept Helios’s gaze without shrinking, but his voice was small when he said, “I made a mistake.”

“But… you didn’t.” Helios replied, turning to look at East critically, a curled index finger on his ghostly chin as he examined the King of the East.

“Our uniforms,” North nodded knowingly, and when Mamoru looked back at him he nodded his head back towards the comatose Kings; he was right, they weren’t wearing the same uniforms - they wore what they had during their past lives, during the Golden Kingdom, but then Mamoru could wear his Endymion gear, and they had worn those uniforms in Elysion after Usako had sealed away Queen Serenity, why would that matter?

“Your  _ stones,” _ Helios stopped, looking from East to South, then to West -

“When were the Archons supposed to arrive?” West asked, outwardly undisturbed. 

“Two months after the Moon Queen was sealed away,” Helios stated, moving to look at North’s pendant, and then, finally, to his, a deep furrow forming between his brows as ghostly fingers moved up to the black stone etched with a golden lotus blossom. Helios was shorter than him. “I didn’t give you that,” he said quietly, honey-yellow eyes flashing up to his before falling back to the clasp.

“The Pyrite pendant shattered,” Mamoru explained, slowly for the benefit of their obviously uncomfortable ghostly guide, “the same night Usako became Princess Sailor Moon; you were exhausted all of last week, so if you don’t remember it --”

_ “Princess Sailor - ?” _

“It’s because Rin changed the timeline,” North interrupted, smugly finishing in a very different assurance than what Mamoru was going for. “Something in his arriving when he did pushed the Archons into acting before they intended to, and  _ this _ is the result,” he said, motioning to the other Kings in general. “Did we get kidnapped during your time?”

_ “Kidnapped?” _ Helios repeated incredulously, eyes opening wide.

West, his arms crossed in front of his chest, mused, “During their first attack we started out separated and had to divide our resources further to watch out for Rin; in their time they hadn’t had to do that.”

“So I wasn’t taken,” South continued.

“And we probably got enough out of your attacker to start figuring things out without the distraction of Rin’s arrival and Mamoru’s visions.” North surmised. “Which means we never met  _ Them _ and Mamoru never died, so Usagi-chan never used her Crystal the way she did and the Senshi never awakened.” 

“Mamoru  _ died?!” _

Figuring out the differences was an interesting study, but there were more pressing matters here - like saving  _ this _ timeline. “It didn’t stick,” Mamoru deflected, waving off future-Helios’s look of concern to redirect attention to the room below, “but I take it if we don’t move quickly, that may not be the case for them.” The mood in the room refocused, and with that renewed focus he turned back to Helios. “We came here to help,” Mamoru stated,  _ whether this is our direct future or not. _ “Tell us about Metallia.”

Helios nodded, and then left the room, a trail of superheroes in his wake led by Cardinal King. “I’ll show you,” the High Priest said, moving faster than before through crystalline corridors and up short staircases until the palace opened up for them again in an enormous room outfitted in various technical devices, the foremost of which was a giant screen that took up three multi-story facets of what must have been the crystalline tower they saw within the structure from a distance. Helios reached a bank of computers and called North over to press a series of buttons that his transparent fingers could not interact with. 

Suddenly the screen lit up, showing a scene recorded from multiple angles: an army marching on Crystal Tokyo, led by a singular figure. The camera zoomed in on the leader as he spoke, his skin mottled green and black, flaming red hair standing up behind him and writhing as though truly on fire; brandishing a staff with an ugly, bulbous end, his voice boomed,  **_“Child of the Moon Kingdom, your_ ** **fate** **_has come to claim you! Metallia is AWAKE, and We will reclaim the planet that was stolen from Us!”_ ** and with a hiss and sweep of the staff, fire exploded outward, knocking through the buildings it struck and setting everything it touched ablaze. The images - all of them - shut down in smoke and static before others clicked on, showing the scene from farther away: the edges of the cone of flame had dissipated nearly a block away from where the leader stood, creating an arc of fire, and everything in between was leveled and blackened. Sirens blazed and people screamed a background cacophony to the gut-wrenching utter destruction one attack had done. The sound in the room cut off suddenly, but the image continued, zooming in yet again to Metallia and his army, but it was Helios who spoke:

“This was the first attack. It came without warning and entirely unprovoked.” Metallia pointed, and his army of half-human creatures rushed forward into the destruction, spreading out throughout the city as their leader marched in steadily, glaring up towards the Crystal Palace. “The Kings were dispatched immediately,” he said, and a few smaller screens popped up, one a black-and-white map with colored markers diverging from the Crystal Palace, heading to surround the affected area. When the first reached the line of red dots, another screen lit up to show West King engaging with the army of monsters. “With its stated relationship to the Moon Kingdom, we tried to contact the Mau programs in Mare Serenitatis for information, but there was no response; through satellites, we later found that the old Moon Kingdom’s palace had been destroyed,” new images on screen, showing an alabaster palace in blackened ruins, and, beside him, Sailor Moon had turned away, holding on to Sailor Venus, who, even as she held Sailor Moon close, did not shut her eyes against the images. “The supercomputers that housed the programs remain unresponsive to remote attempts at rebooting their systems.” 

“Did you send someone up to make the attempt manually?” Mercury asked, her voice tight with control. Her eyes, too, were glued to the screen, but the way they shone made Mamoru avert his gaze.

Helios shook his head. “While technology has come a long way,” he said, motioning to the control system surrounding the room, “it evolved differently to the technology developed on the Moon Kingdom; the only person capable of fixing it would have been you,” he said, “a complication that was compounded by Metallia’s strikes on space launch facilities.” A series of new screens appeared atop the original battle’s views, the windows popping up to show large explosions in other locales, else visual footage of blackened remains after what must have taken place. The screens disappeared.

“But while we may not know where it came from, there  _ are _ things that we found out. First, that  _ that _ is not Metallia.” He pointed to another series of buttons and North kept up diligently. “Later on in this fight, with its numbers depleted by the Kings, they faced him and this happened:” - a mobile camera from an elevated location zoomed in to see the four Kings approaching Metallia, with East and North holding off additional forces while West and South moved in; they were not in good shape, their grey uniforms torn and motions stiff with pain. They couldn’t catch any words from the distance, but Helios supplied, “‘Serve me and live.’ They refused - ” he cut himself off as the image took over for him. Metallia brought his scepter to bear, energy racing along its length to summon the flame that had taken out city blocks. Mamoru’s breath caught in his throat, afraid he was about to see their ends - but, instead, it was  _ Metallia _ who was ended. The black spots on his skin started to expand, fire escaping from within in an enormous blaze, and then Metallia was no more: he was a smoking husk of a human. The Kings on-screen released their hold on their capes and were fine, but as they moved in towards the remains a dark mass of smoke emerged and, as though sentient, rushed from the field. “‘This isn’t the end, Serenity,’” Helios dutifully repeated. 

As the smoke disappeared, the army fled, but not before a pair stormed towards the Kings; the male raised his arm and the Kings flinched and dove for cover as something shot out and exploded on contact. West threw himself towards the staff Metallia had dropped, but the second enemy, running past, threw out a stream of water that rushed it farther afield and, diverging in her path, she scooped it up and ran off with it. “Staballoy and Tethys,” Helios reported as the screens went dark and two large images appeared on screen - close-ups of the two figures, though with city backgrounds rather than the burnt field they had been in within that video. “He can fire armor-piercing munitions that self-sharpen on targets and explode on contact; she has control over water, and always appears when Metallia does.”

“Tethys and Staballoy -” Mars broached, “The two we faced earlier mentioned them. They suggested those two, and others - Ferrocerium - had killed the Kings.” She didn’t flinch from the word, “and maybe, us, too.”

Helios turned back to the controls, North working as his hands, first calling up a third picture - ‘Ferrocerium’ - and continued his narrative. “Metallia’s retreat pulled her army from the field, but after less than a day of peace, they began to return to wreak havoc and…” more screens opened to show an attack on a shopping district, only instead of killing everyone, the enemy - Ferrocerium - used his power to create flames surrounding them to stop anyone from escaping, then started to drain their energy - it was clear enough by the body language, the way they started to slump practically identical to attacks the Senshi had orchestrated. And, just like those attacks, the enemy did not stay to personally oversee them. They pointed at a random human, one that started to fight back, and dark mist surrounded them and one more, eclipsing them from view. When it cleared, two other half-human creatures were in their place. “Replenish their numbers.”

“They’re  _ human,” _ South breathed.

The scene continued to play, and Ferrocerium disappeared, leaving the new beings in charge as people gave out. East King, now in his Elysion armor, arrived on the scene too late, and while he punched one of the creatures through the wall of a building, the people stayed down. “Sometimes, if you knocked them out soon enough, they reverted to their original forms, but those that didn’t would be claimed by Metallia’s forces and appear later in another fight. These attacks continued in areas all over the city, running everyone ragged for days. When Zoisite fell, we decided to try to reawaken the Senshi. 

“King Endymion found their whereabouts and the Kings left to bring them in, but we lost Nephrite to Staballoy in the process, and even with all of them gathered, we didn’t know where to begin - how to reawaken their inert abilities and spark their transformation. 

“That’s when Metallia struck again,” Helios announced, turning to the screen, where new videos were pulled up through North’s touch. An entirely new person led the charge - a woman with flowing green hair and glowing green eyes, holding the same staff. Tethys was to her right. The video had sound -  **_“Surrender this planet, Serenity! Submit yourself to me and face_ ** **justice!”** She pointed her staff and flame erupted from its end, but before long it crashed into a barrier and was thrown back, one tendril sparking to the camera and decommissioning it.

When another image picked up the fight, King Endymion was on the field, a staff of his own held out to face the threat, the Golden Crystal brought to bear at its tip. It felt odd to see “himself” on-screen when he had never been there, but the video was taken from far enough away that he couldn’t really focus on his own features, just his attire: his grey Cardinal King uniform. While “he” fought off against Metallia, who wielded flame and burning plasma at once against him, West and South, also in their Elysion armor, stood by his side, breaking off only when her army separated from her in an attempt to flank them. “King Endymion went out to face it,” Helios said as the Kings fought tooth and nail to keep the transformed humans at bay, “and soon became the new target.” The video’s sound was all crackling static as Metallia’s whips of plasma cut through the air, held off by bursts of Golden Crystal energy; King Endymion transformed, armor from his past life overtaking his Heavenly Kings transformation, and his defensive abilities soon took the offensive. But then South King fell, and in the split-second distraction, Metallia directed another burst of fire at him. West burst in, knocking Endymion out of the way and took the brunt of the attack but was surrounded by golden energy as he hit the ground. Endymion, alone, spun and held up his other hand, directed at Metallia, and at that moment she brought down her staff and a fireball fell, crashing all around Endymion.

_ His body hadn’t been in the room with everyone else’s. _

Metallia’s second host burst into flames and the smoke emerged, rushing towards the explosion where Endymion had been, and the image erupted in static. 

“The smoke is Metallia?” South asked, the lurch in his voice paralleling the one in Mamoru’s stomach.

“Yes,” Helios answered, the static clearing to show no sign of Endymion or Metallia. 

“What was the static?” North demanded, and the video rewound to just before the static overcame it and slowed in the replay, Kaito working the controls as he glared up at the screen.

“The Silver Crystal,” Helios replied, watching the screen as North worked. “Neo-Queen Serenity had been monitoring the situation with me, and when Endymion fell, her crystal reacted.”

“So Endymion was pulled back to the Palace?” East’s assumption was a little less than steady.

Helios shook his head, “It was not. Jadeite stabilized, parts of the city were reformed, the Senshi reawakened, but Endymion disappeared with Metallia.” 

North froze the image just before the static struck and enlarged the image - “There -” he pointed to a silver of pale, near-transparent gold barely seen through the flames and the smoke of Metallia - “That’s from the Golden Crystal, isn’t it? So he’s still alive?”

“We believe so,” Helios replied, though not as hopeful as Kaito’s voice had been. “I left for Elysion immediately to fortify it, just in case… but he hasn’t reappeared.”

“Fortify Elysion?” East repeated, and while Mamoru appreciated it, they couldn’t afford to avoid the possibility.

“It’s tied to me,” he supplied, “so if I started to turn as those others turned, Helios would know and could take steps to stop it, or warn Crystal Tokyo in case he couldn’t.”

Helios nodded curtly. “I’ve been praying nonstop, but so far there has been no indication that an attempt has been made to change his heart.”

“Would his death negatively affect the planet?” Venus asked, and silence fell heavily, four sets of eyes glaring at her steadily. 

At Helios’s hesitation, he backed up her question, knowing it needed to be asked. If he was being used and there was no way out, he would want to be taken down before his body or his powers could be brought to bear against them. “Would it?”

The High Priest didn’t look at them, staring at the screens as he replied, “The loss of the Golden Crystal would be a loss for Earth, but not one that would have an adverse effect on the planet or its current civilization.”

Venus tilted her head up, accepting the response without further comment. 

“If Metallia is after Serenity, turning Endymion could be the end of it,” Mars stated instead. “Would she fight him if he appeared?”

“Losing him dealt a critical blow,” Helios said quietly, “but she’s been prepared for that possibility.” He motioned, and North hit another series of buttons. “The Senshi were effective at first, but in strategic attacks following the King’s disappearance, including the one on the refugee shelter within the Palace itself, and one against the young Prince, they, too, fell, and Neo-Queen Serenity is alone now in the protection of Crystal Tokyo.

“She held Metallia off in her third incarnation -” the images appeared - the exact ones from Mamoru’s visions, only crystal clear: the city from above, equal in height to the top of the Crystal Palace, the position behind the woman with the streaming hair: Neo-Queen Serenity, Usako’s future self. She stood on a platform cut into the structure, the Silver Crystal held out in front of her, streams of energy bursting out of it against an intensely bright figure that lashed out with lances and whips of glowing plasma, the heat so intense that the buildings far below were set aflame. The camera gave out and the image went dark. “This hosts’ body was manipulated; multi-stories tall, it wielded energy we were able to positively identify as being most similar to magnetic bursts and solar storms from the Sun.” The ghostly figure’s jaw clenched, and after a tight breath, he continued, “Metallia burned through this host, too, before she could deal a blow to our Queen, but Serenity was left exhausted and heartsick, even more so when her son disappeared.” He turned, finding Rin, and softly said, “But he did something heroic, and though luck or fate or something in between, he might have just saved his world.” Rin hugged himself, and Jupiter, nearest him, put her hand on his back comfortingly. Helios went on, “He should go see his mother.”

“I want to help,” he replied quietly, and Jupiter bent down and picked him up.

“You’ve done a  _ lot, _ kid,” she said softly, “but I think the best thing you can do to help right now is helping me help you find your mom.” She looked to Venus and Venus nodded, so she started to make for the exit. As she passed behind him, though, Rin reached out and took hold of the cape that draped from his left shoulder, and Mamoru reached back to take his hand.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, encouraging him, “You did all this to help her, right? You should show her you’re okay.” 

“I’ll go --” Sailor Moon started, but Helios cleared his throat to interrupt her, Mercury turning to look at her, too, and Usako stopped, diverting, “catch up with you later, okay, Rin?” She smiled at him, and he nodded, releasing his hold on Mamoru’s cape, and Jupiter led him out of the room, wherein he asked to be put down and led her away. Usako watched him go, and her question was answered without having to ask:

“It could be dangerous to have two Silver Crystals in one place,” Helios said, “the energy may end up resonating.”

Mercury added, “and we’re unsure of time travel’s effects on people effectively being in two places at once; I’d prefer we keep some distance between ourselves and our future selves.” Helios nodded, agreeing with her, and there was a consensus.

“Was that the most recent attack by Metallia?” West stated, redirecting to the problem at hand. Helios nodded, and he continued, “So she gave up on possessing Endymion, then, and moved on to another?”

“We bel--” Helios stopped, corrected himself, “I believe so.”

“A new host…” North trailed off, and started pressing buttons, bringing many images on the screen at once, green eyes flashing between them. Mamoru watched, and as he saw their fight - or flee - race backward, he understood what North intended, watching the other screens work in reverse, keeping an eye out for any sudden appearances the way the Senshi had appeared behind them on the rooftop. He took a few steps forward to better see, standing beside West and his-Helios as North explained, “Sailor Pluto was defeated before we found her in her dimension by something that had not come with the enemies that chased Rin; Pluto said she had found a new host, one from our time --” 

Human Helios sucked in a breath and turned to the screens, searching with them. North had found the timestamp when they had suddenly appeared on the rooftop and slowed the playback down, unsure of how much earlier the new opponent had arrived.

“It was a Space-Time door, right?” South asked, “So there’s no telling what  _ space _ it’d appear in, it could be clear across --”

“There.” Mars stated, and North hit pause before following her finger, then hit play, watching something small pop into place. It looked no bigger than a bird, but it did seem to suddenly appear? North reversed, enlarged the image so it took up more screen space, hit play and - 

_ “Beryl?!” _

Even with Helios flying higher to be even with her image, she was there, clear as day: Beryl. The camera caught her from mostly from behind, unable to see her face beyond the curve of her cheek, but there was no mistaking her; her fairy-wings beat to keep her elevated as she surveyed the city, her mouth moved, but there was no one there to talk to - she nodded, and flew off, but North froze the frame. 

_ “Beryl _ is the new host?” South voiced quietly.

East shook his head, squinting as he approached the screen, “She wouldn’t - there’s no way -”

“It’s her,” West confirmed heavily.

“But why?” North asked, reversing to see her appear again, “And  _ how?! _ She was in  _ Elysion, _ wasn’t she?”

Mamoru could scarcely believe it, but it was her, and she was there. “She disappeared the same night you did,” he reported for North’s benefit but added nothing else; he had nothing else to add. Why would she join Metallia? She wasn’t the kind to get into something without doing her research - ...but then she had acted quickly without them in Elysion, making her own plans… She wouldn’t change sides. There was no way. 

“Metallia’s army changes humans into one of them,” South mused, crossing his arms as he looked up at the screen. “If Metallia came across Beryl, it might have just…  _ taken _ her. She said she didn’t have a soul anymore, so it would have been easy to do, wouldn’t it? To brainwash her, like Diana did to Usagi-chan?”

Like Diana had done? He couldn’t help but be reminded of that fight - of dodging Jewel Tiara’s attacks as Diana laughed, of the way Usako’s eyes had been so empty... Someone took his hand and he started out of the memory, turning to find her there, her fingers intertwined with his. “Then it’s not permanent,” she said without an ounce of doubt. “With Mamo-chan reminding me of who I really was, I managed to break through her control. Beryl will, too. We just have to remind her of who she is, and she’ll come back to our side.” He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, tilting her head to look up at him with a determined smile, and he resisted the urge to kiss her; she said exactly what they needed to hear, and her optimism kept him thinking forward instead of stewing in what  _ could _ happen if nothing changed. He’d just keep pushing forward, with her. 

“Okay then, it’s settled!” East declared, punching a fist into his other palm, “We find her and knock some sense into her before it’s too late!”

“Isn’t it already too late?” Mars asked, drawing everyone’s attention. She continued calmly, “Pluto was defeated by her; Metallia may already be completely in control.”

“Then she’ll take control back,” East shrugged his shoulders. “She’s annoying in how stubborn she is. Metallia got her when she was alone and vulnerable - in front of an audience cheering her on, Beryl’ll kick her to the curb, no question.”

The High Priest didn’t look so convinced. “Beryl’s magical prowess will make her a dangerous host; if Metallia uses her in battle, her form may not give out as quickly as the other hosts, if it gives out at all. It survived the fall of the Golden Age, channeling dark powers of the sun may not cause it to be destroyed.”

“Then we change her back or take her out,” West stated heavily, and Mamoru felt his friend’s strain without having to initiate contact. “Speed up the video,” he commanded, and North obeyed, “let’s see where she goes.”


	4. Complications

**Chapter 4: Complication**

It wasn’t the best of plans, but they didn’t have much of a choice: if Metallia was using Beryl as a new host, they had to break that connection before Metallia tried to strike the Crystal Palace again. At the same time, Metallia’s henchmen were still attacking Crystal Tokyo, stealing energy and turning innocent people into creatures to further fill the army’s ranks - meaning the timing of the next big attack could be sooner rather than later, and Neo-Queen Serenity wasn’t fully recovered yet to defend against something like that. So, they had to find Beryl  _ and _ stop the attacks, both of which seemed like an impossibility, especially considering the henchmen they’d be fighting had knocked their future selves into comas. 

Their only consolation was in that  _ they _ had the blessings of the Shitennou, whereas their future selves had  _ not, _ so the enemies would not be expecting such a significant change,  _ and,  _ beyond that, the Senshi were  _ recently _ awakened from their last transformations, so they wouldn’t be as rusty as they might have been in this time. … assuming they had been rusty. And they had Cardinal King and Princess Sailor Moon with them, which… 

Mamoru  _ had _ to be there. He knew Beryl, he had helped Jewel Tiara snap out of it, he was experienced in fighting and could heal his teammates. He would be a target, but Usako would make a bigger one. Metallia was seeking revenge against  _ Serenity, _ who was kept safe from her agents within the Crystal Palace; what would they do if they recognized her as being the same person in a younger form? Would they… but she wouldn’t accept the idea of staying behind, and her attack had been what finished off the enemy in the Time Door dimension; they needed her, too.

It had taken some shuffling to figure out groups; the direction Beryl had taken was towards the first attack site, completely devoid of life, so they had to split into at least two teams if they were going to put a stop to the attacks on the surviving population and lead them back to the Crystal Palace. Despite the attack made by a ‘citizen’ before, he agreed with Usako in reopening the Palace to use as a shelter; now that they knew what could happen, they could figure out a screening process - the computer system was advanced enough to do practically anything, so scanning people as they approached for any sign of being a  _ covert monster _ shouldn’t be too difficult. As the High Priest led Mercury through the configuration, West called a meeting of the Kings in the nearby library; Princess Sailor Moon tagged along, so Venus accompanied them, too, as Mars made to reconvene with Jupiter and locate communicators for the mission.

The library meeting was more a quick summit to summarize what they knew about their new abilities and items and what they did  _ not _ know, and then attempt to use whatever the library had on the Four Heavenly Kings to put the remaining pieces together; North quickly found a computer terminal and started typing immediately, making quick work of figuring out what shortcuts he could use to make the task faster.

“We’ve got upgraded armor we can call upon and new weapons that make use of an elemental affinity; South, were you granted any additional items or abilities?”

Yuu shook his head. “Just the halberd,” he reported, “nothing more.”

“Add in freaky insider information or whatever,” East piped up, holding up one finger for each of the three lines of the defense he offered when practically  _ everyone _ in the room groaned at him, “He knew we could contact Mamoru from the spaceship - or knew we could straight up  _ teleport _ to him. He knew we could set up that barrier, and he knew we could give him our power at the end, there, too.  _ And,” _ he added, “he could have a heightened sense of  _ smell.” _

_ “Nero,” _ Yuu admonished in a complaint, but Mamoru was glad for what Nero had offered - he hadn’t known about  _ any _ of that - that it had been Yuu who initiated the teleport, at least, though he had known he initiated the barrier. He hadn’t known about the power, either.

“Zochoten, Lord of the South: Catalyst of Spiritual Growth, Lord Who Expands,” North read out from the screen, then turned, “Can you… grow?”

“Like the Hulk?!”

Yuu rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, “Not that I know of.”

“It’d be cool, though.”

“East -” West cut in to redirect Nero to where he intended, “Items or abilities?”

“Trident that can pull rock up to meet it,” Nero stated, holding out his hand for the long black weapon to appear and immediately disappear, “a sword,” he said, the implement appearing and disappearing, “and whatever this is.” He held his hands a different way, and an instrument appeared - something old, like a guitar but with a flat top and a cutout design rather than a hole into the interior wooden chamber. Nero examined it, “I think he called it a lute? An  _ enchanting _ lute?”

Kaito spoke from the computer, “Jikokuten, Lord of the East: Guardian of the Nation, Lord who Upholds the Realm.” He spun in the chair to look at the lute before putting typing again. “The lute could be… there are some stories about it being able to put people to sleep? Or convert them.”

“A brainwashing instrument of  _ good _ ? Like the pied piper?” 

West held up a hand to stop him, “You can figure that out when you’re fighting with the Sailor Guardians to stop the attacks and bring people back to the Palace.”

East sobered and nodded, the lute disappearing. “Upholding the Realm and all,” he commented and fell back into a seat, silent. Mamoru didn’t like the idea of them splitting up, either, but they didn’t have a choice if they wanted to succeed.

“I’ve got a gem that can let me see the truth in things,” West announced, pulling the blue stone he had produced earlier on the rooftop back in Tokyo from a pouch on his belt. “I’ve also got a scroll and a writing brush, but without practice in calligraphy, I’m not sure how much use they’ll be.”

“Koumokuten, Lord of the West,” Kaito supplied, “Punisher of Evil, Seeker of Enlightenment, Lord who Sees All. I think you’re right about the calligraphy, but we can figure that out when all this is over.” He typed a little more before turning around to share his own. “I have a spear that can freeze a target on contact, enhanced hearing, and this,” he said, and opened his hand for a small pagoda to appear on his palm. “I was blessed by Tamonten, Lord of the North, Protector of the Righteous, Patron of Warriors, and Lord who Hears All. If this information is correct, this little thing can erase evil influences from otherwise innocent souls when it’s opened.”

Lord who hears all? Mamoru smiled; it explained how he knew when to duck earlier, and for someone who wanted to run a newspaper it could be  _ very _ useful, patron of warriors or not. Protector of the righteous, for Khalid, too; it fit. Nero’s, too - in his own way. And Yuu’s… the catalyst of spiritual growth? 

“The army -” Yuu breathed, straightening up from his lean against bookshelves. “You could cleanse them?” Catalyst or no, he had a pretty strong moral center, when he wasn’t angling to win an argument. 

“I think,” Kaito said, backtracking, the miniature building disappearing. “Maybe.” 

But Yuu nodded against the hesitation, his voice assuring enough as to erase any question of the possibility from Mamoru’s mind, if not anyone else’s, “You can. You should go with them - you can save them before it’s too late.” 

West nodded, “North and East with them; South, Cardinal and I will look for Beryl --”

“Mamoru?” East interrupted suddenly, though he had not stood; rather, his elbows were rested on his spread knees, his gloved hands clasped and hanging in the air. He stared down at his hands. “Did you get the armor upgrade?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied honestly, not wanting to hide anything about powersets from them. Some things that the Lord of the Center had said he would keep quiet for now, like about what’s coming for them, but nothing that could lead to misunderstandings over expectations. “Taishakuten brought me back to life and let me transform, but he didn’t mention any other abilities or skills -”

“Taishakuten, Lord of the Center,” Kaito read aloud, “Commander of the Four Heavenly Kings, Defender of the Heavenly Kings and Humanity against all that is Evil -” 

“His title isn’t mine to have,” Mamoru interrupted, recalling the spirit’s words clearly, and not wanting to give them any ideas of grandeur that he didn’t have. “I am to keep my title of King of the Cardinal Rose and retain my abilities, but he granted me nothing of his - just my life, and my ability to help protect everyone.”

Kaito hummed in a way that suggested he wasn’t convinced and turned back to the computer. 

“So no armor,” East repeated, for clarity.

“He wore robes,” Mamoru replied definitively.

East nodded, pushed himself to his feet, and strode over to South, starting a quiet conversation and Mamoru wasn’t exactly  _ thrilled _ to see happening. He could watch his own back, and he could watch theirs, and he didn’t like being thought of as a liability or someone that needed to be especially watched. 

“Well,” North said, standing from the computer to clap him on the shoulder, leading him out of the room behind West. “If you start to shoot lighting, or get a diamond mace that gives you foresight and immense power, ask me more.” 

  
  


East was paired with Mercury, Venus, and Princess Sailor Moon; North went with Mars and Jupiter. Each of them had use of a radio that fit into their right ear, activated by touch or verbal command, with semi-private channels so as not to overwhelm everyone with chatter. Everything streamed through the palace, where Helios coordinated things with the “ghost” of his future self. Using cameras, they’d be able to warn the teams of incoming threats and coordinate support should the need arise. Mamoru felt tentatively confident in that Mercury’s computer and Mars’s psychic abilities would warn them before Helios had to. 

Standing just inside the door of the Crystal Palace, they wished each other luck, gave final in-person instructions and reminders, and prepared to leave. He trusted Khalid would take care of things for his team as, for those final minutes of preparation, his arms were full. Princess Sailor Moon held him tight; standing on her tiptoes with her arms wrapped around his shoulders, he was content to hold her for as long as she held him, her face buried in his neck and his heart in her hands. If he could have stopped time, he would have, even if just for another second of being with her like this, where it felt like just the two of them without anything to worry about. Her rhythmic breathing and the warmth of her against him comforted him like nothing else, though as he closed his eyes in her embrace he felt like he could easily fall asleep. And even though thinking about  _ why _ he was so tired could have been terrifying in retrospect, he felt none of that distress within her embrace… but with a gentle call of his name it was over and she released him, the heels of her boots touching down on the crystalline floor with a sharp  _ click  _ as she took a step back, her hands trailing down his arms to clasp his hands. She smiled at him and heart thumped in his chest, demanding he  _ do something, _ but East was suddenly there and her hands were gone from his.

“Don’t worry,  _ Mamo-chan,” _ he teased, but while he continued in a teasing tone, the look Nero gave him as he spoke was a promise: “Usagi-chan is safe with me.” 

“She’d  _ better be, _ ” South quipped, fiddling with his communicator with a frown. 

_ “Please,” _ East shot back, wrapping an arm around Usako’s shoulders to lightly lead her towards the door, “Me, Mercury, Venus,  _ and _ Princess Sailor Moon? These future freaks don’t know what’s about to hit them. Prepare to keep score,  _ Nerd,” _ he called, challenging North.

The blond rolled his eyes and let out a long-suffering sigh, pulling an elastic out from between his teeth as he retied his hair to keep it tighter to the base of his neck. He remarked flatly, “With as much as you showboat, we’ll triple your numbers in half the time. Remember: first priority is to get the people back here,  _ second _ is to defeat enemies. And don’t do -” he cut himself off and changed conversational targets to Mercury, “Don’t let him lead you into doing something stupid.”

Mercury looked up at East with a hint of concern, and East opened his mouth to protest, but Jupiter clapped North on the back and led him towards the door, saying, “With Venus on their team, there’s no chance he’ll lead them astray.”

And, with that, the citizen recovery teams were gone; he returned the waves of goodbye, and as they disappeared he silently wished for their safe return. Khalid ran through the directions with them one last time, and then they, too, left, though at a run and at a different heading. Their feet ate through the city streets; while they preferred rooftops, the area of the city they ran towards was the one hit by the original fireball, and, with their prior experience with one of those scorched roofs, they decided to keep to ground level and open their senses to any sign of attack. When Beryl appeared on the recording and flew off she was hesitant and slow; while there was a chance she was long gone from the city, their cameras had lost her before she entered the blackened debris field, so there was also a chance she was still here. If Metallia was in full control it would have no reason to hesitate - it would have headed right back to its base and started resting up, wouldn’t it? So maybe Beryl had already wrest back control and just didn’t know where to go? Else she was fighting it and could use the backup.

West slowed, Khalid holding up his arm to indicate they had arrived at the location where Beryl had last been seen, and Mamoru stopped, quietly catching his breath as he used his eyes and ears to pick up any indication that their fairy friend was still there. Psychometry would do him no good in this; Beryl had exchanged her soul to stay alive when the Golden Crystal reset things, so she never showed up for him in his scans; they would first rely on standard senses and West’s blue gem and hope the latter gave them more information than the former. The buildings surrounding them were somewhere between fine, scorched, and completely melted, creating long and disturbing shadows in the light of the setting sun wherein nothing beyond the lengthening shadows and the three of them moved. 

“Beryl!” South cried, both a call to her and an exclamation for them and Mamoru quickly turned to see where he looked - “Wait!”South called, running between buildings towards the east, chasing the last light of day, and Mamoru ran after him -

_ “South!” _ West shouted in warning, and South pivoted in response, his forward foot sliding sideways as he spun to face north. He called up his halberd just in time for another weapon to come crashing down onto it. Mamoru jumped, his foot catching the side of the building to the south, and as he flew past them he threw a rose to distract their new opponent. Their enemy - a woman who looked only barely older than they - had silver hair separated into pigtails, the ends dyed deep red that grazed the top of her shoulders and a new cut across one cheek. She growled, blue eyes glaring into him, her grin immediately replaced with a scowl the moment his rose had sliced her, and she grunted and feinted back only to rush forward again to clang her polearm against the pole of South’s halberd. 

_ “Alnico!” _ Helios warned through their communicator,  _ “She can magnetize metals - work her out into the open!” _

Mamoru fixed his stance, faced his palm towards her, and sent out a burst of golden crystal energy to knock her back towards West and the more open street they had come from, but the moment she staggered back a few steps from the blow, South whirled his instrument around and tried to take her feet out from under her with the smaller pointed end. She tried to hop away from it, but her boots caught and she went down. In a continuance of the whirling motion, South had the ax-head of his weapon at her throat, and as she looked up at him, wide-eyed, he smoothly stepped closer to keep the upper hand. “Surrender,” he ordered, his voice sharp-edged, “and we can help you.”

She huffed a laugh, the shock moving through her, and tilted her head so that the edge of his blade barely touched the skin of her neck. Her expression - one of disdain-filled amusement, apathetic towards the danger posed to her - immediately changed and she twitched away from the halberd, a thin line of blood where the blade had been. The cut was shallow but reddening quickly, but it didn’t seem life-threatening, so Mamoru stayed where he was, catching West’s eyes on the other side of the engagement. South hadn’t moved to cause any harm, and as she revealed the injury to him he kept still, moving only to repeat “Surrender.”

She had no choice; her delay was wasting precious time. Mamoru looked back over his shoulder, towards where Yuu had been leading them, looking for any sign of the fairy in the fading light, and when he did, things erupted behind him. He turned, his arms raising instinctively to the sudden burst of motion as Alnico twisted and slammed her hands onto either side of the broad side of South’s Halberd and kicked out at his feet simultaneously; he had to adjust, and as he did, she managed to push the head of the halberd aside to free her head and toss it; impossibly, it was yanked from South’s grip and flew to stick to the wall of the nearest building. She continued her spinning motion, grabbed her polearm, and used it to get back to her feet before whipping it around to strike at South - he jumped back and Mamoru summoned and threw another rose, cutting into her upper arm to impede her --

_ “Endymion?” _

He froze, her voice right behind him, and spun to face it - “Beryl?!” - but no one was there -

**“It’s about time!”** Alnico complained snippily and he turned back to see fire lighting the shadows, as, beyond South, West engaged with the orange-haired man he recognized from the videos: Ferrocerium. Despite an attempt to lead his opponent back towards the open street, through explosions of fire sparked from Ferrocerium’s weapon, West was being pushed towards them, finally jumping over Alnico to be by their sides as Alnico reached up to touch her neck - now swollen and bleeding. She grimaced and, with her taller ally by her side, renewed her attack, swinging her polearm around and South evaded, backing towards Mamoru.

With a touch and slight pull to each of their shoulders, West indicated a retreat, and they turned and ran for the clear end of the alley to find more room to face them. A burst of fresh air accompanied their escape from the narrow passage and they immediately spread out to face the threat; Mamoru stayed where he was, feet planted, and, squinting into the long shadows that steadily engulfed the alley, shot another burst of energy at the pair as they neared, knocking them further back into the passage before jumping back, giving his teammates better warning for when they surfaced.

“Did you see her?!” West called, his silver trident in one hand and scimitar in the other.

South, his right hand positioned towards the alley, was concentrating; his eyes flew open as the halberd Alnico had stuck to a wall shot through the air towards him. Landing in his grip as though it wanted to be there, he replied, “Yes. She’s here!”

The pair burst out of the alley at running jumps, immediately moving in to engage in close combat, and he quickly summoned his sword to block Ferrocerium as the orange haired opponent lunged towards him. His hand solid against the flat of his blade, his enemy’s weight crashed down against him and the air immediately exploded in his face. He flinched and grunted against it but held, pushing to redirect his opponent’s weight and throw him off; he managed to sidestep and slip aside as the man crashed through. Slinging his sword aside to free his hand for an energy burst, he fired golden light after the quick-stepping form of Ferrocerium, knocking him off balance, and then the King of the South was there, decked in the upgraded armor he had worn on the rooftop in Tokyo: a black metal breastplate that hugged close to his body ending in tassets that followed the outside of his legs to his knees, black metallic boots, greaves, and forearm guards protecting his limbs; beneath all a red and gold dressing, loose pants, and long sleeves that moved like flames around his arms, following his movements but never interfering. A black helmet hid his blond hair, and a giant chakram of flame hovered behind him as he rushed in to take Mamoru’s place against Ferrocerium, striking forward with his halberd to knock their enemy off balance. Ferrocerium struck the halberd and flame exploded, but South didn’t react to it, pushing forward as though it had no effect to press his attack - an effect of Zochoten’s armor?

Mamoru spun to find and support West; with his powerset being tied to metals, fighting against an opponent that could magnetize any metallic object she touched could prove difficult; however, as he pivoted towards the dueling pair, it was apparent his assistance was welcome but not necessary: West fought unarmed, dodging Alnico’s attacks smoothly. As he stopped to summon a rose to throw as another distraction, Khalid reached for Alnico’s polearm as it passed near his light blue lined half-cape, grabbed it, and pulled it to send her clumsily running forward, starting to trip over her own feet; he followed it with a tap to her back to send her sprawling and Mamoru prepared to throw the rose as she started back up to give Khalid another opportunity -

_ “Endymion?” _

He twitched, mis-throwing the rose to glance her rather than strike Alnico full-on, and spun towards the remaining sunlight to see a tiny figure barely breaking a silhouette against the setting sun. He had recognized her voice before, and now - “Beryl!” he called, first in answer and then again in warning -  _ “Beryl!” _ \- as a figure detached itself from the building nearest her and cast a long shadow as it sprinted across the distance towards her. Blinking furiously to see through the bright light against the burning after-image of the sun, he ran to defend her, blindly throwing another rose towards the recalled path of the shadowy figure, hoping it would be enough to redirect its attention to him, at least long enough to let Beryl escape - 

A blast struck him, sent him flying - he hit the pavement in a wet mess and rolled; groaning, he pushed himself onto his hands and knees and recalibrated, able to see Beryl apart from the sun now and the two figures that stood too near just beyond her, their stances offensive - with a grunt of effort he was back on his feet and running for her, a rose turning into his sword in his hand as he yelled, calling for them to get away from her, trying to refocus their attention on him. Beryl was a sorceress - everyone said that, but while he had faint memories of some acts from their past lives, in the present he hadn’t seen anything like that from her. She could light candles. She could conjure tiny illusions to bait Nero. She was good with planning and timing, but she wasn’t a fighter! And if she was holding off this Metallia thing, she didn’t need to be afraid for her own safety on top of all that. 

It worked - the pair of them focused on him, and as he threw out a burst of energy and dodged to the other side to both attack and avoid an attack, he tried to form a plan. Solder, the man with the dripping metallic features from earlier that day, had been struck by his energy attack and fell back, but Tethys - the tall feminine creature in blue with a mask for a face - simply readjusted and fired at him again. He jumped, aiming for the top of a lamp post, and conjured and threw another rose to distract them as he landed, checked his angle, took a breath and released it as he kicked himself off the perch with greater speed, sword pulled back, ready to be thrust towards Metallia’s most loyal subject -

But she whipped around to see him, long blue hair fanning out behind her, and the eyes behind the mask glowed blue and, not even halfway through the distance, he slowed, the world around him suddenly denser, his vision compromised as the world seemed to shift, and as he realized what had happened he struggled not to gasp for breath. He stabbed forward with his sword, the movement slowed through the water, but the tip did not reach the sphere’s perimeter. He dropped it, flattened his hands and fired, but the energy just rippled through the barrier, missing Tethys altogether, and while he had been thrown backward with the blast, the water pushed him back towards the center, fighting his every move. His chest burned. His earpiece crackled and Helios started talking in his ear, telling him to stay calm, that the others were coming - 

His attention, though, was not on Helios, or West or South as they fought off their attackers to come to his aide. It wasn’t on how stupid he had been to take on Tethys without knowing what she could do, or on Solder to keep an eye on what he was building. It was on Beryl. On how she flew  _ towards _ Tethys, rather than taking the opportunity to escape. How she pulled hard on a lock of Tethys’s hair, pointed to him, her voice garbled in his ears through the prison of water surrounding him. Tethys answered and Beryl flew still before she separated herself from the mask-faced creature, but rather than fly away, or going to help West, she hovered in space, and, enveloped in a deep red light, started to  _ grow. _ From centimeters tall with dragonfly-like fairy wings, she became taller, the wings disappearing as her height increased to a meter and more, and soon her sandaled feet touched down on solid ground, as tall as the blue-haired creature beside her - as tall as she had been before the battle in Elysion. Pale hands outstretched towards him and the bubble surrounding him popped, water crashing to the ground all around him, restoring his hearing and letting him breathe, but he remained suspended in midair and he found he couldn’t move: the water had slowed his motion, but now his limbs were completely paralyzed. Panic slowly edged its way in, creeping from the depths of his stomach - what was Beryl doing? She had saved him, hadn’t she?

“We should leave,” Tethys said, her arm across her chest in a salute as she tilted at the waist towards Beryl. Beryl barely glanced at her, showing neither malice nor acceptance, though she kept her arms out in front of her, controlling him.

“I can’t move,” he carefully admitted, forcing the words out through stiff lips and clenched jaw; did she realize that?

_ “Mamoru?!” _ Helios’s voice called in his ear. 

His heart skipped a beat as right before his eyes Beryl’s irises changed color, orange-red taking over from the bottom up, chasing away the deep purple-grey color they had held in the past. He couldn’t read her expression, her features smooth, until suddenly her dark brows knitted and her lips pouted in apology. His heart hammered in his chest - what was she going to do? - and then a scepter appeared between Beryl’s hands and the orb in the center pulsated with light. As Beryl, Tethys and Solder resonated with the pulsations of the light, his body erupted in pins and needles, his breath leaving him, and just as a weapon hurled towards Beryl and Tethys, everything went black.


	5. Making Right or Taking Revenge? Red Beryl

**Chapter 5: Making Right or Taking Revenge? Red Beryl**

His head felt like it would split open at any moment. His lungs burned, his muscles ached, and when he blinked awake it was like his eyes hadn’t opened, the darkness surrounding him so deep he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. As his vision adjusted he sat up and two things became apparent: one, he was on a bed, which made him assume he was in a bedroom and had been sleeping, thus the lack of light. Two: he wasn’t wearing his Kings’ uniform, which meant he had detransformed, and in the unfamiliar place he wished he hadn’t. That he wasn’t wearing the pajamas he had been in when this “day” started too many hours ago, either, was a little more disconcerting. If he had been left to sleep the attack off, why would he be changed out of his sleepwear and into a tight pair of pants? The shirt, too - long sleeved and made of something silky, it could  _ almost _ be substituted as a nightshirt if not that the top few buttons were unbuttoned but the shirttail was tucked in and the sleeves were rolled to his elbows. He ran his hands through his hair gingerly and swung his feet off the edge of the bed. Cold floor biting through his socks, he looked down, his eyesight starting to catch enough starlight from what could have been a window directly across from where he sat on the bed to make out a pair of shoes laid out for him. The ground was nonreflective, and considering their hosts’ palace was made entirely of Crystal, the worry that continued to build felt valid, even as he fought to keep it under control. As he slipped into the offered shoes he lightly pressed his hand to the ground and sent out energy, using psylocation to locate his friends or get a look around, only… 

Only nothing happened. 

He swallowed, got up and knelt down, putting both hands flat on the floor, and tried again, paying close attention to his actions to avoid a second mistake. He could feel the Golden Crystal’s energy within him, could direct it to the palms of his hands; he visualized what he wanted and released the shockwave, but this time it was definitive: he sent out the energy and nothing happened. There was no return on lifeforms.

Wherever he was, he was completely alone.

So when a door opened behind him, spreading a column of soft light across the room, he tensed and quickly stood, turning tightly towards it, and, blinking in the sudden light, he saw that light reflecting off his pendant lying on the mattress near his body’s indentation on the blankets. He reached out and grabbed it, hands wrapping around the smooth black stone, its chain dangling out of his fist as he straightened and looked towards the door, waiting for whatever had opened it to show itself. A construct, maybe? Like those that the Archons had employed? They didn't have any souls, so they had never shown up in his searches; these could be the same. 

Instead, the door opened wider to admit a silhouette that was vaguely familiar, the long hair and dress all he could make out until she reached inside and waved her hand beside the wall; the baseboards and headboards of the room suddenly snaked alight up in the same soft orange-red light of the outer hall, illuminating the large room’s dimensions in its entirety, including some alcoves and shadow art. The walls were black with an occasional diamond-like shine: it was definitely not the Crystal Palace. 

“Endymion!” Beryl breathed excitedly as she entered, her person practically radiating exhilaration as she moved into the room and around the massive bed to stand even with him, her newly-orange-red eyes moving from him to the room-wide window and then back to him, a blush creeping into her cheeks as she looked him up and down and he immediately felt uncomfortable. “That suits you,” she complimented with odd intonation, her hands clasping behind her back as she meandered closer to the window, her eyes never straying too long from him. She twirled to face him with her back to the glass, her dress fanning out around her, and cocked her head as she examined him. “I’m glad you’re awake; we were worried. There had been a complication when we first relocated you, but we figured things out and managed to get you here; apparently, and thankfully, before it was too late.”

He tried to keep his voice neutral, almost interested as he spoke, not quite sure what was going on with her in regards to Metallia. “Complications?” he prompted, and she shook her head, long black hair waving around her as she attempted to mollify him.

“People aren’t meant to be in two places at the same time,” she said, “Once we realized that the duality was causing the problem, it was easy enough to fix.”

Duality? … Mercury’s warning to Usagi came to mind and a few things fell into place. They must have originally taken him to where they were holding King Endymion; his arrival had caused problems. But there was, maybe, still a chance. “We?” he asked, though he knew the chances of her answering with the Kings were slim to none.

“Hmm?” she hummed instead, as though she hadn’t understood, and approached him; he tensed, but she stepped past him, turned, and fell backward on the bed beside him. She smiled up at him, at first stretching her arms out above her head, but then moving to lace her fingers atop the pale fabric of her outer gown across her stomach. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked, smiling fondly up at the ceiling. He had to figure out how far gone she was, and where he was, and how close they were to Metallia’s next attack. He swallowed - he’d need to be careful. She glanced at him, her smile turning a little harder as she nodded her chin up to the ceiling and, to placate her, he looked up. The surface was reflective but in an almost pebbled texture, like frozen water droplets, but in it, he saw her stretched out across the bed in a hazy image. His stomach dropped uncomfortably and his guard immediately went up. Her reflection moved and he looked back to her, his expression carefully guarded as she smiled over at him, propped up on her elbows. “You don’t have to worry,” she said, her smile fading, misreading him. “Earth will be fine -  _ everything’s _ going to be okay now.”

“How so?” he asked carefully, again hoping she would make an announcement about how she had captured Metallia, or figured out a way to seal it or disperse it - anything but - 

“Metallia and I are going to fix everything,” she confidently replied, her tone soft and meant to be soothing, though its content was anything but.

“Where is Metallia now?” he asked, glancing back towards the door behind her; if it were separated from her, he could try to explain things, have her fight its control… though she did not seem under any control as it were. If he could share what they had found, Beryl would understand what was going on and could help them figure out how to trap it.

Beryl was less confident in her reply, suspicion creeping into her tone, “Sleeping; going back for me took a lot out of her and she has to rest before the next phase. Why?”

“Beryl,” he said, trying to be gentle as he sat down beside her, speaking quietly but directly, “Do you know what she has been doing to Earth? What her next phase  _ is?” _

She sat up completely, radiating anger and annoyance and refusing to meet his gaze as she spat, “What  _ she _ has been doing is  _ freeing _ it. She was supposed to watch over Earth, but instead,  _ they _ came and sealed her away - sent her  _ here,  _ took over her Kingdom, corrupted her duties to create their own seat of power -” she clenched her hands into fists in her dress and suddenly stood. He stood back as she stormed around the bed, towards the door, and then he quickly moved to follow her, but she stopped dead in the doorway. “Soon, you’ll be free of its influence, Endymion, and you’ll see the truth of things. Until then, you’ll be safe here.”

“Beryl -” he started, but she stepped out and shut the door in his face. He reached for the handle to pull it back open, only to find there  _ was _ no handle. He pressed against it, pushed it -  _ “Beryl!” _ He was trapped?! He pounded his fist on the door once, called calmly but firmly, “Open the door, Beryl. We need to talk about what’s going on.” But there was no response. He stepped back, looked down the stretches of wall and moved towards the alcoves outlined in the low perimeter lights, “Something’s happening and you  _ need to know _ about it!” he called, attempting to appeal to her curiosity, keeping the statement vague enough to perhaps be taken as him trying to help her cause, if she wasn’t accepting anything else. There was still no response, and his hands curled into fists at his side, his mouth forming a tight line as he accepted she had left him there. The alcoves proved to be sitting areas and a powder room, completely without access to any other part of the structure, so he paced back to the door, held out his hand, and concentrated. The energy tingled as it built, and when he deemed it should be enough to blow the door apart he released it. A burst of golden light flooded outward, struck the door, and… nothing happened.

Frowning in frustration he moved to touch the space where his shot had landed and found it warm to the touch, but it hadn’t weakened the door in the least. He’d need more power - or heightened strength. Standing back, thinking of the pendant in his left palm he calmed his mind, thinking only of his transformation, a process that he had used so often within the last span of time it was second nature -- only… nothing happened. He didn’t give up; it was a new pendant, maybe he was supposed to attune to it or something - with the Pyrite pendant he used to have to call words of power to activate his transformation in the beginning, maybe it was the same with this focus. ‘Pyrite Power’ wouldn’t work, but --

“Golden Power, Transform!” … nothing happened. It didn’t feel right. Maybe - “Earth Crystal Power, Transform!” The phrase felt better,  _ right,  _ even, but as warmth spread from his heart and through his body from there, it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and he was there, still, in the blue silk shirt and tight black pants. Another phrase? He had Earth’s crystal, right? He thrust the pendant enclosed in his fist above his head and tried “Earth Power, Transform!” … What had Usako used?! “Earth Prince Power, Transform!” … “Pyrite Power, Transform!” “Elysion Power, Transform!” ?! The pendant - “Golden Lotus, Transform!” maybe?! But still, nothing. Swallowing past the tightness in his chest, pushing down the panic in favor of more useful things, he opened his hand and looked at the smooth stone etched with the golden flower, trying to unlock its secret by inspection, through his hands and his mind and his heart, knowing that every second that passed was time he didn’t have to waste. He had to talk sense into Beryl and stop Metallia before it was too late - he didn’t have time to figure out a new transformation process. He had made a promise to Helios, but he would understand. Slipping the chain around his neck, he focused instead on not becoming King of the Cardinal Rose, but rather upon the attire of his past life, and the unfiltered use of the Golden Crystal’s power that that form brought. Again his chest grew warm, energy radiating out from his heart -- but, just like before, the energy left through his feet. He tried again, chest growing hotter and hotter with each attempt, and each attempt ended the same.

Finally he had to give up. Frustration and fear fighting for control, Mamoru pushed his emotions back, wiped the sweat from his brow and breathed deep and even as he looked at the room again. He had to be productive. The window! It didn’t look to be the type that opened, but there was enough furniture in here - he could break it and escape that way, make it on foot and find another entrance, make another attempt at confronting Beryl, transformation or no. He took a step and nearly fell, reaching out at the last moment to catch his balance on legs that were suddenly far weaker than they should be. Something was definitely wrong, but he couldn’t stop now. He staggered over to a tall standing lamp, grabbed it in both hands, and tugged harder than he should have had to to get it to move. He strode towards the window with the long end trailing on the ground - he realized bitterly he may not be able to break the window as he was, even if he used the best method; but even so he continued: if he wasn’t strong enough now, he could rest for a bit and try again. With a sense of where he was he could even make a better plan --

But as he raised the lamp in both hands, the sharper end directed towards the glass, his faint reflection mirroring his every move, he stopped dead in his tracks. He couldn’t see the ground. He’d need some way to get down - but how far? Would sheets handle it, or would he  _ need _ his transformation to survive the fall? Lowering his makeshift polearm, he moved closer to the window, looking for where the starry horizon ended. ...but it never did. The closer he walked the farther it went until his cheek was practically pressed to the glass and his breath caught in his chest, vertigo making him feel weightless. 

There was no ground. 

There was no sky - no clouds, no moon, no _ atmosphere. _

He was in space. 

He stepped back on exhausted legs and dropped the lamp.  _ If he had… _ but he hadn’t. He hadn’t been sucked out into space, he was still here, still alive, and still able to help. Maybe. At least this explained why his psychometry wasn’t working: he needed a connection to Earth. He kept stepping backwards, the reflection imposed upon the thousands of stars growing smaller and smaller until his legs bumped into the edge of the bed and he sat back onto it, eyes open wide and staring out at the dark. Could he not transform in space? Was that the problem? And, if that were true, was there anything he could do? He couldn’t even escape the room. Was he just one more thing his friends needed to worry about? The attacks on the city, the enemies running those attacks being  _ human, _ their future selves in stasis, the Queen’s fatigue, Metallia’s next assault, Beryl’s involvement, King Endymion’s disappearance, and now  _ him. _ He’d be a burden, one thing too many -- but  _ no. _

He blinked, tearing his eyes away from the darkness between the stars. There was something he could still do. He could get through to Beryl - if Metallia had chosen her it was their best chance. He could take care of things on this end - transformation or no, he could still talk Beryl out of it, talk her back to their side. He’d figure this part out, let his friends handle the chaos on Earth as he attempted to diffuse the situation entirely here. He pressed against the soft mattress to stand, only to fall back down. The transformation attempts must have taken a lot out of him, even if nothing had come of it. He couldn’t leave the room, Beryl was not coming back for now; she’d said Metallia was resting, that she was exhausted after breaking through the space-time dimension, so he had some time. He’d rest up. 

Laying out on the bed, he rolled onto one side, away from the window, and stamped back the unpleasant emotions that he wouldn’t let surface. Closing his eyes, he thought it would be hard to fall asleep - he figured he’d just lay still and rest and let his body recover - but sleep took him almost immediately. 

  
  


He was awakened by a hand on his chest and lips pressed against his forehead. Eyes shooting open, he tensed as long auburn hair cleared from his field of vision enough to reveal Beryl. She sat on the bed beside him and neatly tucked her hair behind her ear - hair that was much lighter than her original black hair - while keeping her other hand pressed to his chest. He glanced down at it and she shyly removed it. He sat up - or tried to, but his head dizzied with the effort and he settled for propping himself up on his elbows. It shouldn’t have been that hard to move.

She frowned at him with worry. “I thought you might be like this,” she said quietly. She reached beside him and he jerked his head to follow the move - she slowed, her hands hesitating for a moment on a small washcloth in a bowl sitting on the table beside the bed. She looked hurt by the accusatory nature of his action, but he said nothing. As he straightened his neck he glanced to the door and found it closed. Maybe not locked - Beryl was in here -- but then, unable to transform, he didn’t need to escape. He needed to stay with her, get her back on their side. Water dripped from the cloth as she wrung it out and he met her gaze, tried to hide his aversion to her changed orange eyes, or the new red tint in her hair. She held the cloth out, mutely explaining her intent to wipe his forehead, and he leaned more heavily on his left elbow to hold out his right hand for the cloth, instead; even in other times, they had never been  _ that _ close. There was a wistfulness in her expression he didn’t want to recognize when she handed the cloth over.

He wiped his face. “What’s going on?”

She took the cloth back from him as she began to explain. “You’re connected,” she said, the words hanging in the air as she deposited it in the basin beside the bed. He didn’t know what she meant - “you and Metallia. You tried to transform, didn’t you?” she asked, but continued without need of confirmation, “The energy you expended went straight to her. You replenished her, whether you meant to or not, because of that connection -”

He took her hand, stopping her immediately. He had to - she couldn’t take that narrative so easily. He didn’t feel comfortable initiating such contact with her - not with their past, not with the connections she may make,  _ would _ make, considering her behavior up until that point, and especially not knowing Usako was out there probably worried about him - but he had to keep her there long enough to make her listen to him and he knew physical contact would make her hesitate to leave. He wished he could make it clear it was platonic. “But it’s  _ not _ because of a connection, Beryl,” he said, and her mouth opened to refute him but closed again with a soft squeeze to her cold hand. “She’s been strengthening from the collected energy from the people of Crystal Tokyo for a long time now, just like the Senshi had been collecting energy for Diana and Queen Serenity. If she got stronger when I tried to transform, it was through  _ taking _ my energy, same as anyone else’s. If we were connected, I would feel it, wouldn’t I?” He asked to engage her, to make her think, to start questioning whatever Metallia had been feeding her -

“You can’t feel your shadow,” she replied instead, her other hand moving to clasp the back of his hand, enveloping him as she looked at him imploringly. She leaned in closer. “That’s what she  _ is, _ Endymion - a shadow of her former self, an embodiment of the Sun, responsible for  _ life on Earth.  _ Responsible for  _ your life, _ your  _ power. _ She’s part of the reason the Golden Crystal is so strong - part of it was  _ her  _ soul gem, sent to Earth to protect the life that flourished there. It fused with Earth’s own crystal and became what it is today - it became  _ you,  _ Endymion.” She held his hand tighter when his arm went limp, his heart immediately rejecting what she said even as his mind puzzled it through. Holding it closer to her chest she pressed on, “She’s only trying to set things right again. She’s not going to take it back, I promise -  _ she _ promised. She just wants to set us free from the people who imprisoned her - the reason why she had to send her soul gem to empower Earth’s to begin with. Once that’s through she’ll leave us alone, content to watch over us from her place of power on the Sun - you’ll be able to do whatever you intend to do with Earth, whether that be to rule it as its King or live peacefully as just another person. Our friends, too - she won’t hurt anyone --”

“But she  _ has _ hurt people,” he said, blinking away from her pleading eyes, his voice thready. He turned his head and coughed to strengthen it. “She’s hurt a  _ lot _ of people, Beryl, she and the beings who serve her. A city is in ruins, its population greatly reduced - our friends in this time are  _ comatose _ , Beryl, and it’s all her doing -”

Her grip on his hand tightened to almost painful. “They’ll get  _ better,” _ she stated harshly. “They wouldn’t hear her out and she didn’t want to hurt them so she made sure they couldn’t stand in her way, that’s all. When this is over she’ll make everything just like it was --”

“I’ve seen what she did,” he interrupted, pulling his hand from her grasp in an attempt to shock her into listening, “It’s all on tape. There was no ‘hearing her out’ - she made a demand and immediately attacked; buildings were destroyed and  _ innocent people died. _ Whatever Metallia’s been telling you, she’s either leaving out a great deal or changing things in her favor. Whatever her origins, she’s  _ attacking Earth, _ not saving it!”

Her eyes narrowed and she pushed up off the bed; he used his arm to sit up a little taller. He had gone too far, but he couldn’t take it back - she had to know, had to have that in the back of her head, whether she wanted to consider it now or later, so long as it was before it was too late. He just had to know what to say to keep her from leaving, but already she was around the end of the bed and making for the door - “She’s not attacking  _ Earth!” _ she spat, making a motion with her hand that the door mimicked, swinging open to admit her. She glared at him over her shoulder, “She’s freeing it from the influence of the  _ Moon.” _

The door slammed shut behind her, undoubtedly locked to him. Influence of the Moon? … he succumbed to his exhaustion, falling back on the mattress and stretching out his tired arms beside him as his mind muddled through what was said. Metallia being from the sun had a ring of truth to it - Helios had said the energy they analyzed from her latest attack was not unlike a solar storm - but the rest of it…? The Golden Crystal being made in part by the Sun? That Metallia sent the Sun’s soul gem to meld with Earth’s when Metallia was being imprisoned - there’s no one that can corroborate her story. His connection is firmly with the Earth, not the Sun. … not that he’d ever tried that alternative… and not that that “donation” would concretely result in anything like that, anyway. They didn’t know enough about how soul gems worked to either confirm or deny that claim. 

And if what she said were true? 

… if it were true, if Metallia was trying to continue to protect life on Earth, she wouldn’t attack its people. Even if it were to ‘free it from the influence of the Moon’ - there  _ were no  _ influences of the Moon on Earth. The Moon Kingdom, if that’s what she meant, was destroyed; she saw to the last of that in decommissioning Luna and Artemis’s programming. All that was left was Princess Serenity in Usagi - or, “Neo Queen Serenity” in this time - and her “influence” was anything but dangerous to Earth. If the Moon Kingdom did seal Metallia away, this was  _ revenge, _ not an altruistic fight for Earth’s freedom. 

He wanted to get up, to pace, to try to think his way around this, to come up with something that could outsmart this creature and catch it in a lie so obvious that Beryl could not dismiss it, but even as he tried to sit up his limbs felt heavier and heavier, his thoughts more and more clouded. Whether or not Metallia was the past owner of one of the Golden Crystal’s predecessors, she was taking energy from him like she owned it, and if he tried to expend any energy to stop her she’d just take that, too, like she did with his attempt at transforming. 

He was trapped and defenseless and there was no way out. He was letting everyone down, and his failure would cost him everything, and yet here he was, barely able to fight off sleep, let alone save the world.

There had to be a way. He had to stay awake, to think… 

  
  


“I’m sorry,” she said warily, waking him as she gently placed a washcloth over his forehead. “I knew that would upset you, but it’s so frustrating to see you like this and know what I know and not be able to  _ do _ anything about how it makes you feel.” 

His eyelids were so heavy… He couldn’t get up. He could barely twitch his hand, let alone anything else. He couldn’t protest, even if he wanted to. All he could do is look up at her and try to bolster whatever strength he had left to speak, to try to convince her she was wrong, if he could muster the strength to do that, or stay awake long enough to try. Her hair was a deeper shade of red.

“They’ve been manipulating you the entire time,” she said remorsefully, taking his hand in hers as she sat back. She gently brushed his hair away from his face, his reaction to her proximity enough to keep him awake as she continued to speak, “you never stood a chance against them. As the Moon pulls the Earth, their Princess pulls you: they created a bond between you and she that sealed your fate before you even met her - you never had the chance to fall for anyone else.” Her fingers lingered on his cheek, her eyes fell to his lips before again meeting his gaze, their orange depths almost seeming to glow in the half-light of the room. He clenched his jaw. “You may hate the idea now, but soon you’ll see. Here, you’re separated from her influence. You’ll forget about her and it will all become so much clearer to you. When she’s gone and all this is over you’ll be able to pick up the pieces - I  _ know _ you will.” She released his hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, her words soft and intimate, “And I’ll be by your side…” she leaned down and he turned his head aside, but her hands moved to either cheek and held him still as she kissed his lips, his body paralyzed beneath her touch.

When she straightened he glared up at her, repulsion rising in his chest, betrayed, used, angry - and afraid for what she said.  _ “Don’t touch her,” _ he warned, throwing all the energy he could into sitting up. His voice was raspy and his predicament was anything but threatening, but that didn’t stop him, “If you hurt so much as a hair -” he had to stop to breathe, “on her head, Beryl -”

But she didn’t wait for him to finish, only looked down on him with pity as she gently picked up the washcloth that had fallen from his forehead and deposited it in a basin and said “I’ll be back to visit you again soon, okay?” She stood so her silhouette blocked out some of the stars in the window behind her. She left, the sound of the door opening and closing announcing her exit.

He fought burning muscles to bring his hand up to his face to scrub her kiss from his lips. She was wrong. It wasn’t some trick - he loved Usagi, and it wasn’t because the Moon Kingdom bewitched him. He loved her smile and her laugh and her explosive reactions to minor annoyances. He loved her stubbornness, and how much she enjoyed food and manga and attention. He loved how much she cared, and how affectionate she was, how easily she got along with people. He even liked how selfish she was, though he hadn’t gotten to see that side of her in so long, now. He wanted to make her happy and keep her safe. He loved her, and admired her, and liked who he was when he was around her. He liked Usagi for  _ Usagi, _ not because some supernatural force had arranged for that attraction to be there.  _ And he had just been kissed by someone else. _ He scrubbed harder, though the renewed force he put into it barely did anything. He felt lightheaded, his head pounding in time with his heartbeat, and he lay back down to ease it. 

Even besides that, though, what Beryl said didn’t make sense. If the Moon  _ had _ bewitched him, if it had somehow forced him to fall in love with Serenity, why would the Queen have gone to war with Earth? Diana’s warmongering aside, even if the Queen thought the Earth was a danger to them, she could have just relied on the “connection” she created to forge an alliance through marriage he would have been only too willing to agree to. Metallia was lying and Beryl was believing it because it was what she wanted to hear. And now, no matter what he said, she’d brush him off under the pretense that he was being controlled, while  _ she _ was the one under something’s control. 

The pounding of his head made it hard to think, but he couldn’t go to sleep again. He had to come up with something - some way to stop this.

Metallia… what if she were telling the truth about her past? Could there be anything to turn her away from revenge, or would they be forced to destroy her to save Neo-Queen Serenity? ...What would happen to the people who followed her - would they return to normal? What about the King? Or the Heavenly Kings and Senshi of the future? … And, more immediately, was there some way he could isolate himself from her energy gathering? He couldn’t afford to sleep anymore. If Beryl was beyond him, he had to get back somehow and share what he knew... 

Beryl… was she truly beyond him? Was there really nothing he could say or do to convince her to reject Metallia and come back with him? ...already she acted as though anything he said fit with what Metallia told her he’d say. What would happen to her? ...She saved his  _ life  _ in Elysion - if it hadn’t been for her, the senshi’s soul gems wouldn’t’ve been returned to Usagi and their spirits wouldn’t’ve been able to protect them as they had against the Silver Crystal’s power. ...Not to mention her loyalty prior to that, in this life and the last. ...No matter the difficulties now, he couldn’t just give up on her and be alright with the possibility of having to… to…

...to what?

… he couldn’t let himself fall asleep.

_ Usako.  _ He wanted her to know he was alright. He wanted to know that  _ she _ was alright. He wanted to be there to make  _ sure _ she was alright.

He was just… so. tired.

  
  


“--dymion?!” he came back to something soft pressing quickly against his face, but before he could open his eyes he was already falling - “Endymi--” 

Pain, sharp and hot, flared across his cheek and his eyes shot open, unseeing at first but the dark room started coming into focus before his eyelids closed heavily again, his hearing fading alongside his sight - “Metallia! Metallia, you have to stop! You’re taking too--”


	6. Allies

**Chapter 6: Allies**

Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since his latest greatest failure. 

He had been trying to protect him. It wasn’t like he had just been standing by, twiddling his thumbs when it happened - he was fighting an enemy that  _ exploded on contact,  _ his attention was rightfully placed on what he was in the middle of. That’s what he had been there for - he was back up, he was an extra set of eyes and ears, he was reinforcements and defense for when they found her just so either Mamoru or Khalid could confront her and focus on her while he handled any enemy. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing. He couldn’t - he  _ tried _ to break away when Mamoru darted off, but he couldn’t manage it without potentially killing his opponent. And the guy had been  _ human,  _ not some unintelligent monster; he couldn’t just… If he had, he might have gotten there in time. But then so could have Khalid. It wasn’t his fault. Not his alone, anyway. And that mattered - maybe not in the long run, maybe not to Khalid or any of the others, but it mattered to  _ him _ because he couldn’t stand the idea of that failure resting on his shoulders alone. Especially now that it was becoming only too clear that it wasn’t a failure that was easily remedied. 

Mamoru was gone, and even with all this future technology, they weren’t finding him.

The cameras weren’t picking up anything - it had been a longshot to start, but they hadn’t covered all their bases before and they damn well were going to now. This place had all kinds of alarms and systems in place, though some had been damaged in the recent past, and still none of those picked up anything - no energy spikes, earthquakes, weird light, nothing. And despite how hard he listened or opened himself up to hearing Mamoru as he had when they were on the spaceship less than a  _ day _ ago, there was no call. He  _ knew  _ Mamoru was still alive - he was confident in that, as weirdly confident as he had been in their ability to teleport and put up a barrier, and that Khalid put so much faith in that confidence was reassuring. That reassurance had been helpful when the others returned not long after they had; the way it had gone down was that he and Khalid immediately returned to the Crystal Palace while Helios - the human one - had instructed the other teams to complete their missions and return, citing that sharing the information while they were still out fighting would be a potentially deadly distraction. Upon their successful return they were informed of what happened, and - short of Nero attempting to deck him - they were quick to turn to positive action rather than blaming anyone for what went down. … Kaito had to see the video, but afterward he was fine. 

Khalid had grabbed Nero’s arm mid-punch and turned it; the two of them were still out in the city - he could see them on one of the videos now: Khalid had his crystal out and Nero was watching his back as they moved through the city and a little beyond, apparently trying to use it to see whatever the blue jewel showed. Kaito was somewhere above him, using the height of the upper levels of the palace as a meditative place in an attempt to “hear” farther. Usagi-chan was with her senshi, having been pulled into helping set up the new refugees, probably as a means of distracting her. Seeing her cry had not been great. 

...and neither was this feeling of helplessness. Metallia had come from  _ beyond _ Crystal Tokyo, but they were only able to focus active parts of their search and surveillance on the city. Just what was happening in the  _ rest _ of the world in this time? Why hadn’t help been sent? Was  _ every _ city under attack like this? Did Crystal Tokyo have no allies?! Most frustratingly, he knew he could find all that out if he could just figure out how to work the computer system - there had to still be internet - but he had next to no experience with computers and he was hesitant to experiment with the system in case he accidentally canceled a program they had running. Helios - the human - could have helped, but ever since Mamoru went missing he had been in and out so quickly that Yuu had barely a moment to register the ghostly figure was in the room before he was gone again to who-knew-where. He had held off on calling Kaito down to see what he could manage with the system, but without any updates in over two hours from  _ anyone, _ he had hit his limit. He couldn’t just sit there and do nothing, even if he had no leads on anything else to do. Mamoru was alone out there, Beryl had turned against them (otherwise they’d’ve heard something, wouldn’t they?), and there was no telling when Metallia would strike again, using Beryl as her host. If they were still trying to save this future and not just survive it, things had to change. Hell, even if they were just trying to  _ survive  _ it, something had to change.

Maybe that was the most aggravating thing. Pluto had made it apparent and then Helios had practically seconded it:  _ this wasn’t their future. _ Not anymore, anyway. Little Prince Mamoru returning to their time had set off a domino effect that separated them from this entire setup, so this wasn’t really their fight. Mamoru had brought them in for Rin, and they had followed Mamoru - not that Yuu wouldn’t’ve tried to help the kid out anyway, but now that Mamoru was put in direct danger for helping, he found it hard not to be sour about the entire endeavor. Helping people is the right thing to do - it is  _ always _ the right thing to do - but at what cost? As it stood, they were stuck in a future that wasn’t theirs, fighting a war that had nothing to do with them, trying to find someone who left without a trace and simply waiting for a giant monster to appear and rain starfire down upon them and kill them all entirely outside their own world. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair, and while before he had felt like it was possible to give this place a chance by removing Metallia’s host from the picture, now he wasn’t so sure. If Mamoru were here with them still, he might have debated cutting and running at this point - they still had Pluto’s key, didn’t they? 

…  _ Mamoru _ had Pluto’s key.

Yuu uncrossed his legs and stood, his muscles protesting the sudden movement after so long inert, and blinked, his eyes adjusting to shifting perspective, no longer dully watching the giant wall of screens for any warning signs or sudden changes. He made for the door and paused; someone should still be here in case there was a change. With a slight frown, rather than finding Kaito himself, he twitched the watch dials to noon and waited for the response, quick to announce himself before eager voices made too-hopeful assumptions about who made the call. 

“Kaito, could you come down here?” he asked as the others signed off, and with a straight-faced nod, Kaito was on his way. 

He approached the bank of computer controls and looked over them for what felt like the three-thousandth time, some of the symbols making as much sense now as they had the first time - further bothering him because if they were using borrowed characters they  _ should _ have allies - 

“Have you found something?”

He turned, expecting Kaito but finding human-Helios instead; it had been too quick for Kaito to make it down anyway. “No,” he replied honestly to the ghostly being, but asked before it could leave again - “But could you tell me something?”

The priest paused, then nodded, the horn on his head dipping before he approached the controls, “standing” beside him, awaiting the question. This Helios was older than the Priest of Elysion in the Golden Age; not by much, but his face was more angular, his amber-colored eyes wider and wiser, but guarded. “What is it?” he asked, looking down to the controls as though to prompt him away from his study.

Yuu kept his eyes on the specter, “Why don’t we have allies coming to our aid?”

The door opened behind them, admitting the King of the North. Yuu did not look away to see him enter.

Helios glanced behind his shoulder at the new arrival as he approached, then shifted his gaze back to Yuu for a moment, contemplatively, and back to the bank of screens ahead of them. “It’s not wise to know too much about your future.”

“This isn’t our future anymore,” Yuu countered. Kaito stopped near them; Yuu could practically feel him putting pieces together before turning to add his attention to Yuu’s, crossing his arms stubbornly.

“Not  _ directly,” _ Helios admitted, leaning ghostly hands on the controls, “But changing the date of attack for the Archons and deepening the breadth of your own powers may not change other events that came to pass in our time. There are  _ good things _ here, and I would not chance them to ease your curiosity -”

“One change is guaranteed now,” Kaito stated coldly, “When we figure out where Metallia came from, we’re ending her the moment she begins in our time. No matter what else shifted when Rin interfered with the timeline, this will not be allowed to happen again.”

“How large is the extent of this attack?” Yuu pressed on that note, “Are our allies bogged down in their own fights against Metallia’s forces, or do we simply not have allies?”

Kaito’s mouth opened as though to object to the idea immediately, but he closed it, clenching his hand on his bicep. 

Helios glared. “We are not without allies,” his words cut through the air. “You don’t need to know anything el--”

“We  _ do, _ ” Yuu interrupted, his volume rising, “as it is apparent our allies care little for our wellbeing!” he said, jabbing a finger towards the empty, burned, melted city shown on their displays. “Knowing about them now could prepare us not to make the same mistakes in friends should our timeline somehow end up back here! Who are our supposed allies?! Did the UN turn its back--?!”

“No!” Helios shouted, breaking him off, “Stop it!” He growled, turning to punch buttons that his fingers slid neatly through, his scowl deepening as it did, but Kaito shifted forward to supply his digits towards the Priest’s efforts, allowing Yuu to remain standing in strong opposition. “This is exactly -” Helios growled, continuing to jam buttons quickly, forcing Kaito to remember and catch up as quickly as he could as the Priest seethed, “-why I refused to talk about it. Get ideas of future betrayals out of your stubborn head, Jadeite, or you’ll cause the fall of this Kingdom before it even stands.” The screens changed suddenly - all of them, all at once - and Helios jabbed his ghostly finger at them in a mirroring fashion to what Yuu had done before. “They  _ can’t _ come to our aide because King Endymion has already gone to theirs!”

Kaito sucked in a breath and Yuu finally cut his gaze from Helios to see what the new images revealed and saw entire cities covered in translucent, golden-colored crystal. Ships were capped with golden jewels and grounded in soft sand all over the world, small towns and country homesteads were covered in golden domes; even in a small wide shot of mountains he could see glittering masses of crystals through the trees.

Helios continued with fire in his voice, “After Metallia’s first attack we put out alerts and prepared to send out to help only to find that as Crystal Tokyo was being systematically attacked, so were other major cities all over the globe. It was already there, collecting energy, its hold solidified. With the attack here so ruthless and all-encompassing, we could not spare our Kings to root out the colonies of corrupted citizens everywhere, but we sent what we could and shared the information we gathered, which helped them fight back. Then Zoisite fell, then Nephrite, then Endymion, and even as Metallia’s attacks redoubled after its second defeat, other countries still started to send us what reinforcements they could. And then, just before Metallia returned the third time, communication between us and the rest of the world ceased, and  _ that _ is why.” He gestured again towards the screen, the fire worked out of him. He took a few steps back, looking through the screens all over again.  _ “He _ did this,” he said, a hint of marvel in his voice, “From wherever he is, he still managed to pull this off.

“The Earth is sleeping,” he explained, “its citizens - great and small - protected from Metallia’s wrath. Before her solar storm arrived here, before she attacked Neo-Queen Serenity and burned us to the ground, she swept over the globe to destroy its cities but it was in  _ vain _ \- her fire will not penetrate the stone.”

“He left Crystal Tokyo unprotected…” Kaito trailed off, but Yuu knew why and finished his statement before he could.

“Because he believes the people here can save the world. If he protected it, Serenity would be asleep, same as everyone else, and Metallia would have won. He believes in her -” he turned to Helios, “Does she know he did this?”

“I…” Helios was quiet, “I’m not sure she heard it. The last of her senshi had only just passed, Metallia was coming for Crystal Tokyo; I think she only heard that she had to prepare to fight, and when it was all over she could barely stand, and then Rin went missing… and in her condition…” 

“She needs to know,” Yuu insisted, “He’s put his trust and faith in her - knowing that could make the difference!”

Helios slowly nodded. “I’ll tell her when next she wakes.” His brows furrowed and he closed his eyes in concentration for a few moments, the behavior odd enough to keep both Yuu and Kaito quiet. “I must go,” he said quietly before opening his eyes. “Elysion needs me -”

“Is Endymion-?!” Kaito was quick to ask before Helios could disappear; Yuu felt the answer to his unasked question was false. 

Helios shook his head, seconding Yuu’s gut feeling, “No. There are just too many nightmares - the Maenads are having problems keeping them in check and need my assistance.”

“Nightmares?” Kaito inquired, the question quick.

Helios nodded. “Ever since he put the world to sleep, Elysion has been overrun with dreams under our protection; we’re managing as best we can, sending dreamers to deep sleep in shifts to try to accommodate as many as we can, but with things the way they were when they were put under, nightmares are common, even despite the natural healing qualities inherent in Elysion’s dream-states.”

Kaito wondered aloud, “Elysion protects dreams now?” the question mirroring Yuu’s. Elysion was the old capital, the idyllic seat of the kingdom they had built together, the unintended battleground they had died on; he had half expected a new Earth Kingdom to be built there, rather than in Tokyo, but to hear that it was still a separate dimension and was home to  _ dreams _ of all things…

“Elysion is a real place, still hidden in that pocket dimension we created all those years ago, but in using the crystal there the way he had on that day, millennia ago, it is now tied directly to him. It is a reflection of him, an extension of him,” Helios said, only…  _ somewhat _ making sense. The priest tipped his shoulders, as though recognizing he wasn’t being entirely clear. “Elysion follows Endymion’s heart, and Endymion’s heart is intent on protecting those people that he put to sleep; therefore, it is now a place of dreams. He wanted to keep them safe, so I will endeavor to keep them safe; not to mention I am not sure what would happen if a nightmare grew too strong there…” His trailed off, his brows furrowing again, and half-bowed before he disappeared right before their eyes.

It was just him and Kaito then. His eyes drifted to the screens, and Kaito stepped back to stand with him, shoulder to shoulder, and gaze up at it, too.

“He put the entire world to sleep,” he mused after moments of silence between them.

Kaito nodded, “And he did it from whatever incapacitated state he’s in.” He paused. “I think he’s being protected by one of those crystals, too.”

“Yeah?”

“I think that’s what I saw in the video before it glitched out - it looked like that same shade of crystal, reflecting out from the smoke. That’s probably how he knew Metallia couldn’t break through it - because she hasn’t managed to break through what cropped up around him.”

“Still… to do that to the entire world…”

“He’s stronger,” Kaito shrugged off, looking over at him for a moment before he started typing at the controls to return the screens to live videos of the city. “He’s had who-knows-how-long to develop his powers, and that was apparently  _ without _ the Lord of the Center’s help. Who knows what he’ll be able to do when we get to this age.” With a smooth but distinct  _ click!, _ the screens were back to exactly what they had been before, and his green-eyed friend turned to face him, leaning back against the control panel. “So you just needed me here as reinforcements for confronting Helios-the-older?”

Yuu smirked, “Nah. I wanted you here to use the machine to figure out how to find out what he just told us about Crystal Tokyo’s allies.”

Kaito raised a hand s though accepting a round of silent applause, tilting his head and shrugging one shoulder, “I’m here to serve.” 

He probably would have said something to the opposite effect in different circumstances.

“That, and take over here while I go find little Rin.”

He crossed his arms and raised a brow. “Why?”

“To get back to the Gates of Time.”

A line formed between Kaito’s brows, his eyes turning suspicious for a moment, mouth opening once but then closing. He swallowed, and Yuu couldn’t help but smirk in amusement watching Kaito figure it out. He wasn’t disappointed, as Kaito’s eyes widened and he practically threw himself off of the control bank as he exclaimed, “The key!”

Yuu nodded, “He should still have it; it’s got a connection to that place, so maybe we could follow that connection back and go get him.”

Kaito was walking towards the door and Yuu joined him, “Or see if she could ping him through it?” 

Ping?

“Regardless, maybe the Guardian could give us insight on where to find him should the key be somehow inoperable,” He reached up to tap on the little receiver tucked into their ears to activate the radio and asked clearly, “Could we get someone up here to take over command center observation?”

The line was silent, but after a moment a soft voice replied, “Mercury, on my way up.”

They paused by the door to wait for her, Kaito making it clear he wasn’t going to stand back while Yuu figured things out. “So, your pagoda thing worked,” Yuu stated, an invitation to talk while Mercury made it up from the depths of the palace.

Kaito nodded. “It took a moment to get through an incantation, so Jupiter and Mars had to cover for me. But it worked. I’m not sure where the evil influence goes once it’s pulled from them - beyond ‘into the pagoda’ - or if there’s some ritual cleansing that needs to take place; Mars had some suggestions. She’s a priestess at one of the temples in the city - did you know?”

“No,” Yuu replied, uneasy but trying not to look that way. “I didn’t get a chance to meet them while they were civilians.”

“Ah.” Kaito replied knowingly. 

Yuu said nothing.

“It’s… odd, isn’t it?” Kaito said, looking at the screens behind them rather than at him. “To suddenly have them as allies.”

He nodded.

“It’s like… I know they’re on our side now, and I understand there were other things at play before, that they were pressured and corrupted and everything, but, regardless…” he was reaching for a reaction, or for how he felt about the matter, so he obliged.

“They were our enemies,” Yuu said for him, stating next without any room for contradictions, “I killed Mars. Did you know why she singled me out?” he continued without waiting, “It’s because I didn’t immediately pass out like the rest of them. The others on the bus, I mean. It must’ve had something to do with being Jadeite before. But there I was, alone as the people around me - classmates, people I had seen on the bus for years - were suddenly unconscious, this white mist leaking out of them, and there she was, standing outside in that strange, dark place, fire snaking around her as she coldly collected their energy. She felt me looking at her and there was just this…  _ fear _ inside me.” He shook his head, shaking away the image that had haunted his dreams for weeks afterward. “And later I killed her. I hadn’t even meant to,” he shrugged, “I didn’t know what would happen, I didn’t - …” he broke off, shrugging again, “But she knows. I know she does. It’s… difficult.” to work with her. To be near her. To see her and think of anything but that cold anger in her eyes as she forced him off that bus and… or the expression on her face when  _ his _ fire overtook her. 

When they had broken off at the Gates of Time and ended up fighting one of the flying enemies that had been chasing Rin, they hadn’t said so much as a word to each other - they just fought the enemy, careful not to cross paths, blasting it with fire from two angles, driving it back. He hadn’t used his knives. She hadn’t used the fire that looked like snakes. It was an unspoken understanding. And then Khalid and Mercury had arrived and the enemy was dead and there was no hiding behind action; instead he took cover behind West’s explanation of what was going on, carefully avoiding both getting and giving Mars attention.

“I try not to think about it,” Kaito said, not entirely helpfully. Yuu rolled his eyes at his slightly-taller friend, hoping to convey all the  _ well, duh, _ at his disposal. Kaito huffed through his nose and pulled the elastic out of his hair to retie it back out of his face - unnecessary, as it had been fine before. Probably nervous. “Mercury dangled me like bait - complete with ramming a sharp hook into me.  _ Mercury. _ When I saw her for the first time in Crown I expected someone ruthless and cold and completely wrong for Usagi-chan to hang out with, but she’s quiet and looked completely flabbergasted as to why Usagi-chan had taken an interest in her. And since she’s transformed she hasn’t looked me in the eye  _ once.” _

He finished with his ponytail, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that,  _ yeah, it’s difficult _ for us, but it’s probably worse for them, and the faster we try to move past all that the better it’ll be - if not for us, then for Usagi-chan.” He put a hand on his hip, looking to Yuu, “I can’t say I’m not glad we were put in separate groups for that first mission, though; Jupiter, Mars and I have less against each other for past transgressions.” 

Had Khalid done that on purpose? He hummed a response.

The door behind them opened automatically as Mercury approached it, and they turned to welcome her in; just as Kaito had said, though, she avoided making eye contact, instead just nodding at them. “I’ll radio if there are any changes.”

“Thank you, Mercury,” he said, making an effort.

She just nodded again, moving deeper into the room, her eyes on the monitors. They left, Kaito leading them to the elevators to the upper floors and Rin.

  
  


They couldn’t find him  _ anywhere. _ They had combed the living quarters, calling softly for him, not wanting to awaken the Queen, but having actively searched for the better part of the hour, they had to conclude he was with her. They stood before tall doors that  _ had _ to be the King and Queen’s quarters and tapped their microphones for help. Maybe they were cowardly to do so, but in Yuu’s house, if his parents’ door was closed, you did  _ not go in there  _ unless you were  _ literally dying, _ and Kaito looked less than thrilled to go in first. And, besides, if she were exhausted they didn’t want to make her feel like she had to get up. They just needed Rin to tell them how to get back to Pluto, so they called Helios, figuring he could take a break from tailing enemies to pop in there and have a look, but rather than  _ their _ Helios showing up, the ghostly form of Priest Helios appeared instead.

“Why are you here?” he asked, looking towards the door.

“We need Rin,” Yuu stated plainly. “He can get us back to the doors of time -”

“Not to leave,” Kaito hasilty qualified, “But to see if she could help us find Mamoru.”

The Priest’s brows furrowed, not following.

“He’s got one of her keys,” Yuu said, nodding towards the door. “It may not work but we won’t know until the Prince takes us there. Right now it’s a better plan than staring expectantly at screens we know he won’t be showing up on anytime soon.”

Rather than answer, Helios just stepped through the doors to the room. They waited, and a couple of minutes later, the Priest returned. “He’s not in there; have you checked -” but his words caught in his mouth, his eyes opening wide in surprise, and he winked out, disappearing again.

“What was that about?” Yuu commented.

“It wasn’t exactly promising…” Kaito trailed off as he tapped his ear for the radio. “Mercury, how is it looking down there?”

“No changes,” Mercury replied after a moment.

“Thank you,” he dutifully responded, “Please keep us apprised of the situation should anything change; Priest Helios disappeared abruptly without explanation so we need to stay on our toes. Usagi-chan?” he called, moving towards the elevators. Yuu followed.

“Yes?” she replied, the background noise of a lot of voices leaking into the transmission.

“Is Rin with you?” Kaito asked, the elevator doors opening.

“I haven’t seen him - isn’t he with his mother?” she sounded worried.

“Not directly but --”

Yuu put one hand on Kaito’s shoulder to stop him and held the other out to pause the door before leaning out, chasing a faint sound he had thought he heard - 

“I’ll look for him down here!” Usagi-chan declared, dropping the conversation. 

Kaito followed him out into the hallway, so they were  _ both _ staring at the little blue kitten with pale blue eyes and a golden crossed-circle insignia on its forehead as it raced towards them, bell ringing wildly with every running leap. It stopped a few feet from them, paws skidding, and bowed its head as it caught its breath. “A pet?” Kaito asked Yuu.

“Please, wait, young Masters!” the kitten said, its voice young and masculine, “I apologize for not greeting you sooner, but please let me go with you to find Little Lord! I was supposed to be watching him but I fell asleep with Her Majesty and that door is so hard to open -”

_ “It talks,” _ Yuu whispered hurriedly back to Kaito as the kitten went on about how large the door is and how ill-placed the handle was in comparison to nearby furniture.

Kaito hissed at him to be quiet,  _ “Think Luna,” _ he suggested before cutting into the kitten’s tirade against minimalist room arrangements, “Do you know where he could be, ...uh…” he trailed off as they had yet to be introduced.

Right. Luna. The computer-cat of the Moon. And that other one - the white one; he remembered seeing that one in the flesh when it had warned Endymion about the surprise attack. They had been able to talk, so this wasn’t  _ entirely  _ outside of the realm of normal. For them. 

The little blue kitten practically jumped up in alarm before landing, sitting, and bowing its little head again, tail wrapped around its feet in feline embarrassment. “I’m sorry! I did it again - I am Gaea of Mau, now of Crystal Tokyo, guardian to Earth’s Crowned Prince Mamoru Lord Endymion -” it’s head went from bowing to hanging, “though it’s apparent that I'm not doing that great a job at it.”

Yuu knelt down, reaching out his hand with his index finger in a hook towards the kitten, “Don’t worry too much about it, Gaea,” he said, the youthful voice and obvious inexperience evidence enough that the cat-person was young and should be commended for trying. Gaea peeked up at him, reached forward and tentatively put his paw on Yuu’s finger. He had expected a sniff, like kittens usually did, but he could do a handshake. Pawshake? Whatever this was. He gently moved his hand up and down once and the kitten removed his paw and brightened back up again. “So, do you think you know where he could be?”

“Maybe!” Gaea proclaimed, tapping back toward the elevator. Yuu and Kaito followed, Kaito pressing the button to open the door as the three of them stepped in. “Sometimes he likes to visit with Sailor Pluto, so we should check there!”

That worked.


	7. Elysion and the Garden of Dreams

**Chapter 7: Elysion and the Garden of Dreams**

He ran, throwing everything he had at the enormous creature that strode purposefully through the city of thorns, but to no avail. It barely responded, even as he fired a concentrated beam of golden light from his rose sword. It just got faster, moved farther from him, and no matter how hard he ran he was getting farther and farther behind. He jumped, he _flew,_ but he was batted away effortlessly with one swing of its gigantic tail and landed hard in a thicket of briars. Trapped, he slashed with his sword, kicked his way towards the path of destruction in its wake, ripped and pulled against how his clothing stuck to the thorns and held him back. He couldn’t let it reach the castle. Everything pushed him back, the briars grew thicker before him - with every step forward he moved three steps back, and still, the footsteps of the monster boomed and shook the land around it. It yelled a challenge, deep voice bellowing, and people - humans - screamed. He had to help them! But the vines grew thicker, blocking out the light -

 _“Endymion!”_ someone called, but he knew it was a trick. If he joined hands with her he would gain the power to _aid_ the monster, not destroy it. He pushed on, struggling against the press of thorns and the pull of the voice from the darkness behind him. 

_“Endymion!”_ it called again, but the voice was different - deeper, less feminine - and as his sword was ripped from his hand and moved beyond his reach, he did not follow its progress with his eyes. He had to ignore the voice, to focus on the enemy. His hands open wide, palms out, he threw another blast of energy outward, but the plants only grew -

_“Mamoru!”_

He paused - the enemy had not used his name, only his title - but it was his folly, as in pausing a hand reached out from behind him, clasped his shoulder, and pulled. He fell back into the dark, the thorns disappearing alongside the light…

And suddenly he was in a vast field of flowers, the ethereal light soft about him, thousands of whispering voices moving like the wind through the air all around. Where had he just been? He turned, not quite willing to accept the sudden peacefulness of his new surroundings, suspicious of a threat hiding just beyond his sight - but instead of monsters or friends he couldn’t lead to truth, he found a twilit sky and an idyllic forest, before which was a structure carved of white stone. It was familiar, though the roses that grew around it, the vines that crept up its pillars and around its arches were new, rather than something out of his memory. Barely within the structure stood a figure that, for all the world, looked like he would prefer to rush towards him but held back, his appearance half-hidden in the fading light.

Calm as opposed to apprehensive, Mamoru stepped towards him. As he walked, fireflies took off all around, taking to the sky as hundreds of stars to light his way, and the figure in the gazebo relaxed his stance, disappointed, but stood taller and waited patiently for his arrival. Firefly light reflected off of the golden horn protruding from his head, and Mamoru recognized him all at once: Helios. As he stepped up the stone stairs to the platform beneath the crossing white archways the fireflies dispersed, their light filling the fields with a soft glow and reflecting off the peacefully still lake between this structure and the castle far beyond. 

“Mamoru,” Helios greeted with a slight bow to his head. In just his name alone, Mamoru knew this was not _his_ Helios, but rather the guardian of Crystal Tokyo’s time. Which meant this _was_ Elysion, just as the familiarity suggested.

“Elysion is beautiful,” he replied, moving to rest one hand on the stone railing as he looked over the lake, only to find his hand wasn’t entirely there; he could see through it as easily as they had seen through the High Priest’s form back in the castle. His heart sank, and he tried to push past the disappointment and despair the realization brought.

Helios joined him, his form solid, his footsteps resounding against the wooden floor beneath them. “Thank you,” he replied, amber-colored eyes forward, “It took some time to restore it to its original state, and more to transform it into the paradise you see before you, but it was a labor of love.”

“I can feel it,” Mamoru replied, taking a deep breath of the cool air in an attempt to calm the bitter emotions building in his chest, but no amount of deep breathing, even in this atmosphere of peace and tranquility, would ever overcome the knowledge that he had failed them. 

Helios turned to him as though sensing it. “Are you alright?” he asked, placing his solid hand on Mamoru’s ghostly shoulder and somehow Mamoru felt it.

He turned away from the sight of the lake and the castle beyond, “As well as could be expected, given the circumstances,” he replied, unable to keep the note of sourness from his tone. He was dead, Elysion now his own personal Elysium, made so through the connection he had to it. Would the others meet him here, eventually? _Sooner, perhaps, rather than later, thanks to him?_ … should they try to visit him before that time, would he be able to interact with them, or would he be a ghost? Obviously Helios could speak with him - the ability of his sort of priest? Through him, he could at least apologize for not being more careful, for not being able to carry through with their plan. For letting them down. For leaving them. _For leaving her._ “Do they know?” he asked, his heart a stone in his chest.

“Not yet -” Helios began to say, but Mamoru interrupted.

“It’d be better to let them know now, rather than wait,” he said, his hand curling into a fist on the railing. “Maybe in your time they’ve grown past this, but Kaito thinks better knowing all the pieces and Khalid would need to change whatever plan he had in the works to include that I wasn’t coming back. Try to give Nero something to punch and Yuu somewhere to go. They’ll get past it, but it’d be better hearing from you than hearing from Metallia or Beryl or one of their lackeys.” 

“So Beryl has turned?” Helios asked. 

Right. Information. He nodded his head curtly. “Metallia took advantage of her feelings towards me and the Moon Kingdom and Serenity and worked up a story around them. She hasn’t completely transformed, like the three others in the videos, but she’s beginning to.”

“Has she spoken of Metallia’s origin?” Helios asked.

“The version she made for Beryl, in any case,” Mamoru replied, reporting, “She said she was the original guardian of the Sun, and that when the Moon Kingdom was settled they sealed her away to usurp her power. She said that she sent her soul gem to Earth before it could be sealed away so it could be joined with Earth’s gem to create the Golden Crystal, to protect Earth in her place.” Helios sucked in a breath and Mamoru turned to face him, his brows furrowing, his report stopped. The pale guardian’s mouth was in a tight line, a crease in his brow; his hands were in fists by his side, and the confidence Mamoru had in the story being false suddenly wavered. “Is it true?” he asked, afraid for the answer to be true and find that not only was the Moon Kingdom foreign to the system entirely but that Serenity’s predecessors had entered the system as enemies.

“It is not her story, no,” Helios stated carefully, the calm in his tone backed by hot anger. “Not entirely, in any case. But from it, we can glean the bits of truth she hid to make it more believable.” Helios turned and leaned his back against the railings of the gazebo, his elbows propped as he considered.

“What parts aren’t her story?” Mamoru asked carefully.

“She was never the guardian of the Sun,” Helios stated, “Metallia was not responsible for sending its soul crystal to combine with Earth’s, and that process was done long before the Moon Kingdom was settled.”

He had questions.

“The Golden Crystal isn’t of Earth, then?”

Helios shook his head, looking towards him, “It is _entirely_ of Earth, don’t confuse yourself - it is simply additionally protected by the Sun.” 

“But what does that --”

“Nothing,” Helios interrupted with authority, but as Mamoru looked to him the guardian’s eyes softened. “The Sun’s protection is passive, it is not something you can harness, so tuck that information away for what it is - a miscellaneous fact.”

Mamoru turned more to face him, the quandary still jumping around in his head. Protected by the Sun? Could he have… … but that was all irrelevant now, wasn’t it? “And how did _you_ learn of this ‘miscellaneous fact’, if it is from so long ago?” Mamoru asked in an effort to refocus himself on things he could potentially help with, rather than chasing a rabbit down holes that would lead him nowhere.

Helios fixed him with a critical stare before cautiously replying, “I was there.” To Mamoru’s incredulous look, he shrugged, adding, “Kind of.” His gaze shifted to the field of flowers Mamoru had come from and stated, “Your miracle on the battlefield that night was not the first time souls have been reincarnated; mine just so happens to come from a little further in the past.”

“A little?” Mamoru repeated, in his own opinion taking the revelation quite well.

Helios smiled, “Well, maybe _a lot_ further. A couple millennia, give or take. And _no,”_ he said, sliding his gaze back to Mamoru, “Your Helios has _not_ realized that yet, so try not to mention it to him.”

He nodded absentmindedly, putting pieces together - “It was you, then?” he asked, but to Helios’s confusion, he elaborated - “You were the guardian of the Sun?”

Helios’s eyes dropped, staring at the pale planks of wood at their feet. He shook his head, “No,” then added, wistfully, “but we were friends.” He paused, “In the end, he did sacrifice himself to combine his Sol crystal with the crystal of Earth, but it was not to protect Earth against the Moon Kingdom, but an enemy far more dangerous and ancient.” Helios cleared his throat, “He had no regrets and was not sealed away. That Metallia knew that the crystals combined, though, means it - she - whatever _knows_ about that,” he looked up thoughtfully, “else could sense the sun’s power in the Golden Crystal and made up parts of a tale that coincidentally was close to the truth.”

Helios had _known_ the guardian of the Sun and his reasons for doing what he did to protect Earth... “Did you choose to be reborn?” he asked, drawing the Priest’s attention from the purple sky above.

“I did,” he said, fixing his gaze on Mamoru. “He loved this planet so much he forfeited his soul towards its protection; the least I could do is stick around and offer what guidance I can to his successors.” He half-smiled, but that smile soon faded, “And protect that memory. Metallia probably doesn’t know about that old enemy, but the part of the story about the Moon Kingdom is probably true - it may have been sealed away by them, thus the grudge it has against them, and the Queen by extension.

He paused, “So Beryl was manipulated due to how recent the fight against Diana and the Moon Kingdom was, in your time? An ancient grudge against the Moon Kingdom would make more sense than the reason Diana had, wouldn’t it?” he mused, “And Beryl’s loyalty would align her with Metallia, in Metallia’s telling. Were you able to confront her?”

“Yes and no,” Mamoru replied, crossing his arms. “She wouldn’t believe anything that I said; Metallia convinced her that both the Earth and _I_ am under the Moon’s influence, and until that influence is erased I’ll do and say whatever it takes to protect Usako, or Queen Serenity or Princess Serenity or whomever she’s imagining as the person holding the strings.”

“Ah,” Helios said, nodding his head, a scowl on his lips, “Right. That _would_ carry weight with her in that time.” He let out a breath and grew quiet, considering.

“But not this time?” Mamoru asked, prompting an answer, anxious to hear what had become of their dynamic in Rin’s time. Helios gave him a look, as though reminding him it wasn’t good to know too much about the future, even if it was no longer his, but he was dead. There was nothing he could do with that information, no path he could damage. He reasoned, “If she knew of her place in this future, of how she herself fared, maybe she can be convinced that Metallia isn’t completely truthful. She would trust her future-self’s judgement - Khalid could use that in an attempt to convince her to give up Metallia. If the Beryl from this time is awake, and not comatose somewhere like everyone else is, her appearance could be enough to tip the scales -”

Helios shook his head; while thoughtful, he took the time to briefly explain, “That’s not possible.”

Mamoru waited for further explanation, but when none was forthcoming he had to assume… “She died?” His stomach lurched. She had had no soul - if she had died… he may be stuck here, but at least he was still himself. He was still experiencing things, he had an ‘afterlife’, but she… 

“No,” Helios denied, looking over at him sharply and punctuating the answer with a short shake of his head, repeating, “No, she’s not dead. She’s just… _elsewhere._ ”

“Elsewhere?”

“Not on Earth or the Moon. She met someone and is travelling with them - happily, from what her letters have suggested.” Travelling? … through _space?_ “She found love and is spending the years exploring with them; there is no way to contact her now, but even if we could, she would never be able to make it back here in time. But that... “ he considered, “maybe we could use that.” He turned to him, nodding, moving on - “Where are you being held?”

Being held? His body? He shook his head; even if they wanted to recover it he couldn’t be much help in locating it. “Somewhere in space,” he said, the last word sounding as incredulous out of his mouth as it had in his mind. “It was moving - a meteoroid, maybe? It wasn’t large, from the perspective I could see, anyway. No physical horizon outside the room I was being kept in. It was dark, so potentially moving towards the Sun and inner system? If it was passing by planets, none were so close that I could make them out among the stars.” He breathed out, “That’s where Metallia and Beryl are; she was draining me, had Beryl believing that we were ‘sharing’ the energy because the golden crystal was originally hers. I don’t know how we got there, but, unless they left as soon as I died, she’s not on Earth. There’s no time to worry about recovering my body, though -”

“Mamoru,” Helios interrupted warily, straightening up to put his hand back on his shoulder, leaning in sincerely as he said, _“You’re not dead.”_ He…? Helios straightened, using his free hand to indicate the world around them. “Elysion is, currently, a land of dreams. You’re just dreaming - the first dream you’ve had since you left. I was able to pull you out to speak with you. You’re still alive, and we’ll figure out where your body is and bring it back as soon as we can. While you’re here, you’re safe; King Endymion has spread his protection to every soul sheltered here, including his younger self’s, it seems.” He released him, looking up and to the left, as though getting ready to leave, “I’ll keep you apprised of what is going on up there, but for now I’ll tell them what you were able to tell me and see what we can do with it. Thank you,” he said, turning back to him. “This could help -”

“Let me go back,” he said, steeling his resolve. If he was alive, he could help. He had more options to try. “I can try again - I can work on convincing her -”

Helios immediately shook his head, taking hold of his wrist as though to keep him in place, “No, Mamoru. If you’re here, you’re safe; if you go back she just may drain you of everything, and then where would we be? Stay here -”

“No,” Mamoru said, shaking his head, pulling his arm free of the Priest’s grasp. “I’m not leaving everyone to face this while I just sit out on the sidelines, safe and sound. I can still try to help.” He implored, “If I can stop them before Metallia’s ready to return to Earth, then she won’t be able to attack Crystal Tokyo again.” He could tell Beryl where the Golden Crystal really came from, about why Metallia had to go to the past to find her because her future self knew better than to ally herself with a lie. He’d just have to figure out a way around the energy drain. “If I run into trouble again, I’ll just… start dreaming again,” he said, as though he had any control over that. How many times had he passed out, only to dream that last time? “I can tell you what I’ve learned, you can use it to prepare, or modify the plans you guys come up with while I’m away.” He caught his eye, “We need all the help we can get. Let me keep helping.”

Helios returned his gaze steadily… but then took in a breath and let it out, conceding. “Just deciding to dream around her isn’t exactly something you can control, but there may be another way.” He walked down the short stair, leaving the canopied gazebo, and stooped to pick a single red rose before returning. “Jadeite says you have one of Pluto’s keys. If you _must_ return instead of staying safely here, then use it immediately to escape next time your life is threatened. No matter what happens because of it, don’t die there.”

He nodded. The key. He hadn’t felt it on his person, hadn’t seen it in his reflection, but he had not given it to anyone - it must still be with him somewhere. 

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Helios said, “Are you sure?” He nodded again, taking a breath to prepare himself. Helios offered him the flower, and he took it. “Treat that as a talisman,” he instructed, “Keep your thoughts trained on it, and you’ll find the strength to move. Now _wake up,_ ” Helios said, pulling hard on the arm that held the flower to throw him off balance. As he fell over the steps of the raised structure, Helios whispered when he passed, _“Good luck.”_

  
  


He awoke in an entirely different place than he had before. It wasn’t Elysion. His body was solid. It wasn’t a dream. But he was in a coffin of some sort and that wasn’t entirely reassuring. Focusing on the thought of the rose Helios had offered, he pushed out with his hand, but the clear, domed lid rose easily from atop him and he sat up. He was in a chamber made of eerily shaped stone, the walls looking like they were veined, as was the floor around the dias holding the coffin he was in; before him, enormous, glowing deep orange-yellow with darkness pulsing at its center, was some sort of bulb made out of the rock itself, like a seed suspended between floor and ceiling, and the energy it gave off gave him _chills_ \- 

“Endymion!” a voice called gratefully, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the evil mass. Was that _Metallia?_

**_“YOU SEE, MY CHILD? I BROUGHT HIM BACK. FOR YOU. I WOULD NEVER DO YOU HARM,”_ ** a voice like an earthquake resounded in the chamber, making it shake - or, rather, making _him_ shake. He breathed carefully, _moved_ carefully, not quite sure of what was going on or if he could use whatever was happening to his advantage in trying to convince Beryl to listen to the truth - She was there, suddenly, her eyes nearly as orange as the glowing orb behind her, her hair a deeper, brighter shade of red, her face shallower, more angular. Her shoulders… there was something wrong with there, a protrusion, sharp and pointed, like a horn or a fang -- she cupped his face, bringing him closer to her; he moved with her rather than fight her, not sure yet whether Metallia realized she had not, in fact, brought him back, but Helios had sent him back. If she believed the former, maybe he could --?

“Endymion!” Beryl repeated, and even her voice was a little different - deeper, wider, somehow. “Are you alright?!”

 **_“HE WILL BE FINE, THOUGH UNABLE TO ANSWER YOU FOR A TIME,”_ ** Metallia answered for him, and something pulled at his hand, dragging it to move - he let it happen. Let Metallia believe what she would; it would give him time, at least. His hand encircled Beryl’s wrist, and she smiled, stepping back to give him room. His body moved to get out of the raised case; it was an odd sensation, like he was some sort of puppet, but he worked with it. **_“SOON HE SHALL BE FREE OF THE MOON’S INFLUENCE. TAKE HIM TO HIS ROOM, AND WE WILL MAKE FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR THE FINAL STEP._ **”

Final step? His heart hammered; he didn’t have much time. 

Beryl pulled him along and he followed, a door suddenly appearing in the chamber wall where none had been before. As it closed behind them, sealing them away from the sight of the formless mass that was Metallia, she spoke. “I thought I lost you, but Metallia was able to reverse the mistake. Rest - once you’ve rested you’ll feel better -”

He thought of Elysion, pictured the red rose, and fought back against the puppeteering force and slowed. She held up, looking back at him quizzically, and he went for it. He shook his head, as though just waking up, and croaked, his voice breaking from strain, “She’s lying to you.”

Her brows furrowed, “What? No… Endymion, you’re not thinking clearly, remember? The Moon --”

“The _Sun,”_ Mamoru interrupted, imploring her to listen, taking her hand to force her to stop and pay attention. The correction had given her pause and he tried to use it - “The Sun’s soul stone did combine with Earth’s, but it wasn’t Metallia that initiated it - Metallia wasn’t the Sun’s guardian, and the change happened long before Metallia.” Beryl’s mouth started to open and he implored further, “This isn’t about the Moon, Beryl. This is about the Sun and the Earth, and a force that is lying to you to get you to do what it says.” Her lips closed, brows furrowing further - “Can you take me somewhere where we can see the sun?” he asked, both to keep them moving and her focused and well as to orient him a little more. Her head tilted, looking up at him to examine him, and he held firm under her scrutinizing gaze. “We don’t have much time,” he said, and she swallowed, glanced back the way they had come, and pulled him onwards, changing their direction to a new stone-encased path. 

“You know she went back in time to get you,” he bid as they walked. She no longer held on to him, “But do you know _why?_ ”

“... to show me what my future was supposed to be,” Beryl said quietly, “What it would be, if I helped her free you and the Earth -”

 _“Because she knew she couldn’t get to the you that is here,”_ he pushed. “You’re powerful, Beryl, and Metallia knows that, but the you from this time is happy and content - if what Metallia says is true, would you have overlooked something so devious for so long? If there was something substantial to what she said - if the Moon were really in control of me and held sway over the Earth, would you have been blind to it for so many years? I trust you more than that,” he said, catching up to her to look her in the eye as they walked. Her orange irises glanced up at him and then quickly away, red brows still furrowed, though in anger or thought was unclear. _“You_ trust _yourself_ more than that, don’t you?” 

Ahead of them sunlight beamed through a break in the wall to their left, blinding in the corridor, and he slowed her down, just outside of its intense glow, and took her by the shoulders, avoiding the pointed horn protruding from the curve of either - “She’s using you by lying to you and manipulating you into working with her willingly - don’t let her. She’s seeking revenge against people who sealed her away and destroying life on Earth in the process. That’s not something you would ally yourself with, Beryl. I know that about you - the lengths you’ve gone to to protect Earth stands testament to that. Don’t let her change you. Renounce her and come with me.” 

He let her go, stepping into the blinding light, and held out his hand to block the orb of the sun to see clearly. Ahead of them, a blue star shone brightly, and he inherently knew that it was no star. It was Earth. Too far away still to make out as a disc or a crescent, but close enough to pick it out from the background of stars. He felt at peace being able to see it, but that they were so close brought up new potential problems: how fast were they moving? Was this meteor on a crash-course?

“We can stop her,” he said, turning back to Beryl. “Will you help me?”

The ground shook beneath his feet and his body started to fall to it, but Beryl remained standing and he realized it wasn’t the ground - it was _him._ Metallia was pulling from him again. He thought of the rose, kept it focused in his minds’ eye. “We have to go, Beryl,” he pressed, reaching out for her, straining against the immense weight that pulled him down. Where was the key? 

She stepped forward, hesitantly. “Endymion… No, _Mamoru…_ I almost made a huge mistake,” she said, but took his hand. Relief swelled within him, but as the force increased, his free hand patted against his pocket, his chest, searching for the literal key to their escape. 

“The key…” he managed to groan as he was forced to his knees, Beryl’s concerned expression over him suddenly turning to understanding. She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled it out - Pluto’s little golden key, and he took it and her hand as well, focused on the rose, and raised it high, as he remembered Rin having done. 

“Oh Lord of Time and Space, Chronos!” he called, his voice shaking with strain, and then the entire rock did start to shake, throwing Beryl off balance beside him, but he kept his hold on her and pressed on - “Listen to my call! Guide us to the Guardian of the Door - Sailor Pluto!” 

The key exploded with light, enveloping them in a glow entirely different than that of the sun, and then…

They were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you for your reviews and kudos and follows, everyone!!! ♥♥ They give me LIFE! :D  
> This, unfortunately, was the week I finally caught up to myself XD Things got really busy and I haven’t been able to write as much as I’d like to @-@ BUT I WILL PRESS ON!! Know that if I miss next Sunday’s posting, I will have the chapter the following Sunday!! Spring break is coming for both the high school where I work and the university I’m attending, so that week I’m going to try my hardest to push ahead!
> 
> BUT I THOUGHT IT COULD BE FUN TO ASK YOU, MY BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL READERS:  
> Do you think Beryl has really renounced Metallia, or will she betray Mamoru in the end?  
> I ALREADY HAVE THE ENDING IN MIND (and there aren’t that many chapters left! :O) BUT I’M ALWAYS CURIOUS! XD ♥♥
> 
> As always, thank you for reading Cardinal King!!


	8. Queen Beryl of Rose Tokyo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Definitely next Sunday!" I said... and then COVID quarantining hit and life was twist-turned upside down~
> 
> This chapter is *late*, obviously, hahaha, and while I only have the first 500 words or so of chapter 9 in the works, I went back through to update chapters (typos, etc) and saw that author's note at the end of chapter 7 and *guilt slapped me in the face* and I figured I could drop this chapter I just finished even without another ready in reserve! Just know I'm working on it as my only creative project at the moment and intend to live in the CK universe until Metallia is dead and Arc 3 is complete!
> 
> THE STORY SO FAR:  
> LAST TIME, ON CARDINAL KING:  
> Following after Mamo-rin, the little boy of the future, the Heavenly Kings and their new allies*(?) the Sailor Senshi make it through the time stream, meet Sailor Pluto, and arrive in Crystal Tokyo. Upon safely reaching the Crystal Palace, they meet the ghostly form of the High Priest of Elysian, Helios in a human form. From him they learn about what's going on. (In light of a long update time, here are the cliff notes:  
> \-- Metallia is attacking. She has been repelled three times so far - she continously burns through her hosts and has to retreat - but with consequences each time.   
> \-- Her armies have made a mess of Crystal Tokyo. Her last attack was so powerful it melted buildings and was repelled by Neo Queen Serenity from atop the Crystal Palace.  
> \-- The Kings are down, King Endymion was taken and is missing, Helios is stuck in Elysion in its defense, the senshi were awakened and were taken out. Its NQS and Rin and ghost Helios.  
> \-- Turns out Metallia went to the past with the Doom and Bloom Girls after Rin, ran into Beryl there and convinced her to go to the future and be her vessel. This is bad because without a soul and with magical abilities in a magical body, Beryl would be the ultimate host for Metallia.  
> \-- in an attempt to gather survivors back to the palace and find Beryl, the group splits up. In this split, Mamoru was taken captive, ends up on a small comet heading for the inner system and is being drained by Metallia, who claims its because they share an origin and has Beryl believing that its the Moon's influence that has warped Endymion's perspectives.   
> \-- North and South find out that when King Endymion went missing, he managed to cover every city in protective Crystal to keep them safe, which is why no other government has come to their aide. They realize Mamoru has a time key and try to find Pluto to see what they could do about finding him using that.  
> \-- Mamoru dreams, and is pulled out of a dream by Helios. Elysium is now protecting dreams as Endymion's protection threw everyone into slumber and Helios is trying to keep that slumber peaceful. They share information.  
> \-- Mamoru tries to talk sense into Beryl using that information, and she agrees to trust him. They escape back into the time stream.

**Chapter 8: Queen Beryl of Rose Tokyo**

He felt the intensity of Metallia’s pull come crashing down on him in the split second of their departure as the ancient and evil force fought back against the magic that teleported them away, and in that moment he felt himself slipping… until a force as cold as ice gripped him, jerking him forward, and rather than falling back to the ground of Metallia’s base, he stumbled into the quiet pocket dimension governed by the guardian of the space-time door. His fall was averted by the grip on his hand and then arm, Beryl moving with quick concern to compensate for what he hoped would be momentary weakness, but they weren’t back on Earth yet, and his arrival was not met with a sudden burst of strength. 

Exhausted, he nevertheless braced and straightened, covering her hand with his in thanks before letting go, unlacing his fingers from around her hand while keeping careful hold on the key that had been held between them. Though she had released him in turn, her hands hovered near him as though waiting to help in case he should stumble again, her expression a mix of concern and guilt. He assured her he’d be fine once they walked through the door - stubbornly willing that to be true - and she nodded silently, one hand falling to her side, though the one closer to him still seemed to hover anyway. He held the key out in front of him and moved it to and fro, as Rin had done hours...days? earlier, watching the intensity of the glow of the little pink gem on its top waver and glow. When he had found its brightest orientation, they started walking, albeit slower than his usual pace.

At first it was quiet - just the two of them and their muted footsteps amidst the mist and half-light of their surroundings - and maybe Mamoru might have kept it that way if it were anyone else he was walking with: it was too easy to fall into himself, to think about what was going on back in Crystal Tokyo, to consider what Helios had said, to wonder and worry about the others and what might happen now that Metallia was without a new vessel. And Usako… they were all safe, right? Helios would have told him if something… but Beryl sniffed, inadvertently drawing his attention, and as he looked back at her she averted her gaze and cleared her throat, and then, quietly, asked if they had figured out what they had asked her to help with - the shapeshifters and the lost civilization. His breath caught and he nearly lost a step at his thoughtlessness; he had a lot on his mind and even more to worry over, but he at least had met with Helios and could tentatively trust that his guardian from the future would have filled him in if anything else had developed, whereas she had only him and memories of what had just transpired to think back on. He paused to gather his thoughts to tell her about the Archons and what had happened, but she jumped in with a question before he could get a word out, further guilt propelling her interruption as she asked after Yuu, and whether they had had to stop searching for him in order to chase after her.

That concern, at least, he could assuage easily, reminding her that she had seen him - that he had been with him in Crystal Tokyo when they met, that he had been fighting one of Metallia’s people. ...but then, he had been wearing his new full-body armor, so he had to point out that he had been the one with the red accents and the glowing red disk behind his helm. ...which elicited a skeptical look from Beryl, and without an easier explanation that she may accept, he went back to the day she disappeared to explain. He glossed over some details, trying to keep Archon issues separate from Doom and Bloom girl concerns just to keep the story straight for her, but not long after recalling how Khalid was taken, half his mind on the events and the other half concentrating on keeping one foot in front of the other, she reached out and took his arm, putting a finger to her lips, and he quieted, listening intently for what had given her pause, and then heard it too - footfalls racing towards them that suddenly slowed as they grew quiet. 

He couldn't fight, not like this, not in this place, not yet, not if he had to concentrate just to stay upright. Metallia's people had found their way into the time stream before, and if they had again then this was the worst time to run into them. He considered using the communicator - after talking to Helios there was at least some chance that one of his friends was waiting with Pluto, but even if he contacted them, there would be no means to tell them where he was and the noise would alert whatever threat waited for them to their exact whereabouts. It was better to hold tight and let it pass. … until, from a different direction, he caught the unmistakable sound of someone small trying very hard not to cry. "Rin?" He called out without hesitation; if he had heard him, then whatever else was out there might have, too, and while he couldn't protect him, he trusted that Beryl could. 

The footfalls started up again, the sound coming from all around them at once, and Beryl raised both hands into particular positions and started mumbling something quietly to herself, drawing symbols in the air that glowed green in the wake of her fingertips. Her attention snapped to their left, the sound suddenly coalescing as a small figure appeared out of the mist. Rin, red-faced and panting, stood still for a moment, taking in the sight of her; Beryl froze, the magic still in the air, and thankfully made no move to defend them. 

The same couldn't be said for Rin.

"LET HIM GO!" the kid yelled at the top of his lungs and _ran at her_ with his arms outstretched like he was going to try to push her over. 

"Rin!" Mamoru tried to call him off as Beryl canceled her spell and distractedly dodged him; Rin didn't follow after her, instead skidding to a stop between them a little clumsily and defensively held out his arms like a barrier. 

"Leave him alone!" he challenged, his pose holding strong despite the trembling of his arms. 

How long had he been out here? How had he found them? “Rin, it’s okay -” he called softly, carefully stepping forward to put his hand on the kid’s head familiarly, meaning to calm him down without having to chance kneeling when he wouldn’t want Rin to see he’d probably need help getting back up again. Rin quickly glanced up at him and back to Beryl, ruby-irised eyes unsure. “She’s on our side,” he assured supportively, and added an introduction - Helios had said she was alive in Rin’s time; though she traveled, Rin had to have met her, hadn’t he? “It’s Beryl, she’s here to help.”

“Beryl?” Rin repeated hesitantly, looking back her way, where he added in all cautious suspicion, “Why isn’t she a fairy?” 

He knew of her, at least; starting to relax a little, he felt an explanation was all that was needed and figured that he could potentially get away without a _full_ explanation for him in this place and at this time, he replied, “She is, and she’s just not a fairy right _now_ -”

“You don’t recognize me?” Beryl asked, her question quieting the longer it went on, as though she surprised herself in the asking and regretted it. Her eyes were tight on Rin anyway, her body language all over the place: as though she were crumbling into herself even as she wanted to reach out, to demand answers -- maybe she hadn’t caught on to that hint of familiarity with her name, maybe she didn’t understand how different she looked right now, maybe this made her doubt what he had said earlier about her self in this time being alive and well, but the way she looked at him, at _Rin_ , was like the way someone looked when they were hanging off a precipice: desperate, afraid, unbelieving.

Rin shook his head, still standing with his arms out despite Mamoru’s assurances, and it was Beryl who staggered forward, still caught in some inner fight between staying put and running for him. “You don’t… at all?”

Rin stayed put, shook his head again, and Beryl’s shoulders sagged as she stared at the ground between them, her eyes moving back and forth rapidly, facing a problem, all alone. It hurt his heart to see; no matter what terms they were on, they were friends. “Beryl,” he called softly, taking steps towards her to try to talk to her, to remind her that she _was alive_ here, even if Rin didn’t recognize her, but as he moved around Rin her head jerked up suddenly.

“But you - your hair, your eyes?!” she exclaimed, pulling locks of her own newly-reddened hair over her shoulder, as though offering some sort of proof of… … of what? 

Who… did she think Rin was? 

“How do you not _know_ me?!” Beryl cried out in hurt and anger, halting him as she lurched forward with the accusation. As she continued he slowly put his arms out in an attempt to block Rin from her sight, taking a step to the side to try to place himself directly between them, “It’s not -- she said -?!” Beryl’s eyes were wild as her head snapped up to look past him, screaming - “What is the meaning of this?!” - as the air around her crackled with static electricity.

“Beryl,” he called, calm but firm in his attempt to de-escalate whatever was happening before it went too far, but as he felt the kid reach up to grab at the back of the silk shirt he wore, he realized how close that point was - for Rin, anyway. “This is Rin,” he said, though he made no motion to show him to her, not while she breathed so quickly and deeply and looked at them so intently, “He’s from this time, and he’s only known you in your fairy form. Your appearance has changed under Metallia’s influence, but he knows you. You’re still alive in this time, remember? You rejected it here, that’s why it got you in the past --”

“ _I KNOW WHO HE IS!”_ Beryl yelled, cutting him off, the static electricity forming full green bolts in the air around her, popping sharply as the thick mist of the time dimension gathered around her like storm clouds, darkening their surroundings even as winds formed to whip around her and lash out towards them. Her hands were in fists and as she slammed them down _thunder_ boomed, her voice carrying with it as she screamed, her eyes shut, “He’s _OURS!_ Your son and _mine_ from the future WE MAKE together when all this is _OVER!_ ” When she opened her eyes again her sclera were tinged with green and her irises were ruby red, and they glowed in the darkness that gathered around her. 

\-- Usako had been able to transform here; which meant he should be able, too, in direct contact with Earth or not. He just needed to remember the phrase --

“That _Sailor Pluto_ is responsible for this, isn’t she?!” she hissed, “I chose not to kill her, and in revenge for that _mercy_ she reached into the rightful future to kidnap _our child_ and subject him to _this!_ ” she screamed, “To the poisonous lies of the _White Moon_ , stealing _him_ from me, too! Well, I _WON’T HAVE IT!_ ” She bellowed again and green lightning burst blindingly around her --

“ _Golden Crystal Power, Transform!_ ” he called for power quietly, but even as it activated and he felt the warmth spreading out from his chest, he knew it wouldn’t last long; it pulled from him, his stores, and those were already dangerously depleted. He’d just have to make it count. While he knew they’d never be able to find him, if they were even there to receive the transmission in the first place, he deftly twisted the communicator watch to noon to open a channel. They had to know, even if he were unable to hear anything that could have been transmitted back to him as the storm around them rose to a deafening crescendo of thunder and wind. Rin’s hold returned at his back, his small form crowding in close behind him. If she believed Rin was theirs, she wouldn’t hurt him. Right? So he still had a little more time to try.

The light faded and Beryl, too, was transformed. Gone was the dress from the Golden Kingdom, replaced with a blood-red gown, fitted to her form; the horn-like growths on her shoulders had elongated and sharpened into something that looked like fangs, a matching set at her wrists now, too, and her bright red hair fanned out around her behind a tiara that looked like the broken headdress from that last Doom and Bloom girl, but for its size and beryl-stone coloring, not unlike the gem in her old simple circlet. “ **I am Queen Beryl of Rose Tokyo, of the Neo-Golden Age, -”** She raised her hand above her head and a staff materialized there - the same staff from the recordings he had seen in the control room within the Crystal Palace. Metallia may have been rejected in its attempt to pull him back to the meteor, but it must have managed to make it through within Beryl, and now Beryl’s transformation was complete. “- **And I will burn out this corruptive influence once and FOR ALL and MAKE THINGS RIGHT!** ”

Her staff above her head started to glow and pulsate, the globe at its end focusing to show that same light pattern from the rock formation in the meteor - like a black soundwave against a glowing pool of orange plasma. What was she going to do?! “ **Beryl!** ” he yelled above the cacophony, trying to stop her, to buy them time, to talk some sense into her - “ **Don’t do this! You’re not yourself, you’ve been lied to! Stop, before it’s too late!”**

“ **It’s already too late!”** she yelled back, looking up at the staff and then back at him, her expression softening as she met his eyes, “ **For** ** _them_** **, Endymion. It’ll all be over soon, and then you’ll be free, and our future will go back to normal. We’ll fix things here, in** ** _this_ ** **‘now’, and then I’ll go back to your time and do the same. I’ll save you from this confusion and heartache. It will be alright, just leave it to me.”**

The staff grew brighter, pulsated faster, bathing them all in surreal orange light; whatever was happening, whatever power she was amassing, there wasn’t much time left. As he called a rose to hand, he gently reached behind his back to separate himself from Rin. If Metallia were fully in Beryl, and it was preparing to destroy Crystal Tokyo and everyone in it, he had to stop it. Even if that meant… Even if that meant he had to fight her. “Run back to the time-door, Rin,” he called, turning his head to be heard but keeping his eyes on the new form of his old friend. “Make sure they know what’s coming and are prepared. It’s up to you, alright?”

“I won’t leave you,” Rin whimpered, and Mamoru swallowed, keeping calm despite the increasing frequency of the light. There wasn’t time to argue.

“You have to, Rin. You need to warn your mother and the others. You don’t want her to be alone, do you? You have to go.”

He sniffled, swallowed wetly, and his voice cracked after his initial hesitation, “I can’t. I lost my key.”

The key. He opened his hand behind his back revealing the little golden tool, trying not to think about what that meant for what Rin was doing out here earlier, how afraid he must have been, only to find him and for things to somehow get worse. “Take it and go, I’ll find my own way back.” The key was lifted from his palm. “Run fast, okay Rin?” 

With another feeble whimper from behind him, Rin ran off, and the rose in Cardinal King’s hand transformed into a sword. 

“ **You would put him in danger?”** Beryl asked harshly, “ **Are you so corrupted?”**

“It’s only dangerous if you choose to make it so,” he returned, holding the sword at the ready, “Yours is the corrupted heart, Beryl. Release the staff and reject Metallia. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“ **Then** ** _don’t_** **,”** Beryl stressed, “ **Just wake up, realize what’s going on here isn’t right - it has** ** _never_** **been right. The Moon --”**

“ _Stop it._ ” 

Her mouth closed, as did her eyes, with an expression of defeat. “ **It is good he took the key. Now I know you’ll stay put --”**

The staff’s light was solid, complete in whatever it had been attempting, and he was out of time. He quickly adjusted his grip on his sword to aim its tip at her midsection and ran forward in a burst of all the energy he had left in him, gritting his teeth against what he was being forced to do, and the heavy cost. Had there been another way? Could he have separated them, somehow, without resorting to this - to dooming Beryl to an eternity of emptiness by his hand?

Her sentence had cut off in a sharp intake of breath, surprise at his choice, and she twisted out of the way before his sword fully connected. Instead, it sliced through her side, rather than right into her, and as his momentum carried him past she brought the staff down on top of him, swinging it at his back and knocking him to the ground. As he slammed into the cold surface on his stomach he felt his transformation fade away: protecting him from the reactive attack had taken it past its limits, and exhaustion fell on his adrenaline like a weighted blanket. He managed to flip over, bracing himself on his left elbow as he raised his hand, palm out towards her, and willed the last of his energy - all of it, from the tips of his toes to the depths of his heart - into that hand. 

He hadn’t meant for it to end like this, but he had chosen this path: he wanted to help Rin, and in the process led his friends and _Usako_ onto this path, and now they and Usagi’s senshi would have to face this threat without him when - without him - this threat may well not have existed. He could end it here, and while he may not be able to join Beryl in an afterlife, at least she would know she wasn’t going out alone. 

She pointed her staff at him in response to his raised hand, her mouth a thin line and her brows twitched in concern. She looked from him to the gash in her side, pressing her hand against it to come away with blood that was too dark in color to be human. Her expression changed, hardening, and that hand moved to join the other on the solid glowing staff. “He’s not himself,” he heard over the roaring winds as the crystalline orb thrust towards him shifted to show that same pattern, and in the depths of the undulating darkness he saw a glimmer of something darker and reflective, and could practically feel the energy being pulled from him before he could send it out --

And then she was body-checked by Princess Sailor Moon. While smaller than Beryl by nearly a head now, Usako had come in running full force, her forearms crossed in front of her, and collided solidly with Beryl’s arm, knocking them both over in a heap. His heart was in his throat as the pair went down and Usagi screamed in surprise, but she rolled out of the way and came back up onto her knees closer to him, her sceptre in one gloved hand, ready and wary as Beryl gingerly started to rise back up, one hand on the gash and the other pointing the staff towards them again. 

“Where’s Beryl?!” Princess Sailor Moon demanded. 

“ ** _You!_ **” Beryl seethed, the storm around them becoming even more violent as she got to her knees, pressing the end of the staff on the floor to help her stand.

Sailor Moon pointed her sceptre at Beryl and started in -- “ _Moon Princess --!”_

“ _She’s Beryl!_ ” Mamoru warned, dispersing the energy he had gathered so he could move again, Usako’s arrival suddenly reopening the possibility of cleansing Metallia’s influence. Surprised blue eyes met his, colored with concern, but her hold on the wand changed and she swallowed her phrase to change it:

“ _Moon Healing --”_

“ ** _Ha!_ ** **”** Beryl mocked, coming to her feet and bringing the glowing staff to bear, “ **_Healing_ ** **?!** ” 

He grabbed for the discarded rose he had used as a sword and threw it at her, needing it to distract her and let Sailor Moon finish charging her attack; he didn’t give it enough power to do much damage, but in some twist of luck or fate, it landed stem-first in her chest. She caught her breath, reaching up with one hand to curl around the flower incredulously, red eyes finding his again in betrayal. 

“ -- _Escalation!_ ” Sailor Moon cried, and pale moonlight streamed from the end of the Moon Wand, the silver crystal’s energy sparkling in the soft white glow that enveloped Beryl, and he held his breath… but the white light was soon outshone by the sick orange-yellow of Metallia’s staff, the area around the orb darkening as the silver light was absorbed into its depths. Usagi cut off the flow when she realized what was happening and hopped up onto her feet, favoring one arm as she faced off against Beryl, who muttered something to herself -- _or to Metallia_. 

“ ** _Fine!_ ** **Hand over the Crystal,”** Beryl then demanded, “ **and I won’t burn you to a crisp where you stand!** ”

“What?!” Sailor Moon squeaked, taking a step back towards him protectively, and he put as much effort as he could muster into getting up: Beryl wasn’t bluffing. With the animosity she had shown towards the Moon Kingdom and Usagi in particular, he had no doubt she wanted her dead, but to give up the crystal would be giving up part of herself - what would happen if she were separated from her soul gem again? He didn’t want to find out. 

“ **Three…”**

“She’s too far gone,” Mamoru called quietly, managing to sit up, shakily getting his legs beneath him. “You have to fight her!”

“But she’s still in there!” she contradicted.

“ **Two…”** Beryl adjusted her hold, the orb directed straight at Princess Sailor Moon, and fear pumped adrenaline through his shot system yet again. He staggered to his feet, reached out to pull Usako back to step between them --

“ **Moon Twilight Flash!!** ” Usagi yelled out quickly, and, as Beryl flinched and moved to cover her eyes with the intensity of the light, he was pulled along behind Princess Sailor Moon as she ran back into the storm. The suddenness made him clumsy, his legs like gelatin beneath him, but his hand in hers was enough to keep him going, until electrically-charged fire sliced through the air beside them, his hair standing on edge as it passed, and as it exploded through space it blew them as easily as they would have been thrown bodily. She screamed and he cried out as they became airborne, and while she tightened her hold on his hand he wanted to tell her to let go - to run without him. He was holding her back, and the danger he faced here was nothing compared to what was against her.

“ **One!”** Queen Beryl’s voice cut through like thunder. 

They hit the ground hard, their hands breaking apart as they rolled. Panting in the effort of the run against the energy he had left, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and begged her form to move, and as she picked herself back up he urged “Run!” but she was already coming back for him, kneeling down to help him up. “She won’t hurt me -” he all but pleaded with her to understand what he knew - “but she _will_ hurt you! Run!” 

“ **Keep away from him!”** Beryl warned, appearing out of the dark and angry clouds the mist had once been, Metallia’s orb flashing. From where she crouched, Usagi held up her crescent wand defensively.

“This isn’t you, Beryl,” Usagi reasoned with quiet intensity, her heart ever on her sleeve, “I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on things, but you have to know that this isn’t right -”

“ ** _You’re_ ** **the one that’s not right!”** Beryl shot back, thrusting the orb forward, but the solar plasma did not rush out of it again. “ ** _No,_ ** ” Beryl spat through grit teeth, “ **we kill her** **_now,_ ** **screw the Queen, we’ll recharge and face her later!”**

“ _-agi-chan?!_ ” an ethereal voice called, echoing faintly around them, and hope surged in recognition of Yuu’s voice.

“We’re here!” he called back, willing the cavalry to arrive in time, but the second call was his name, and it seemed to get farther rather than closer. “ _Run!_ ” he quietly urged her again as Beryl/Metallia’s disagreement abruptly ended as she realized help was coming. He hated this - he couldn’t help her, he couldn’t protect her, but Princess Sailor Moon wouldn’t leave. 

“We can work this out,” Usagi insisted intently, standing “No one has to get hurt, Beryl, there’s a better way --”

“ **There** **_is_ ** **no--”**

A tunnel of flame crashed in out of the gloom, completely unrelated to Queen Beryl, aimed directly for her, and as it struck her she cried out in surprise, managing to dash out of the flame _towards them_ . Her hair singed, quick as a snake she wrapped her free hand around Princess Sailor Moon’s throat and lifted her from the ground, just out of his reach. Queen Beryl choked out a snarling cry - “ ** _Fine!_ **” and thrust the staff up over her head --

“No!” he yelled, seeing stars as he threw all he could muster at her in fear with his heart in his throat; the attack hit, but at that moment the pair of them - Queen Beryl and Princess Sailor Moon - vanished. His heart stopped as darkness fell upon him, the sickening light of Metallia’s orb gone with them. “ _Usa...ko?”_ he called against all hope of her somehow being left behind, struggling to get back up onto at least hands and knees, but his muscles failed him. He wanted whatever Queen Beryl had tried to have failed, that she would suddenly _be there_ and be alright and _not_ have been taken right in front of him when he had been able to do _nothing_. But the world around him lit up in dim red light originating from some point above him, and they weren’t there. North King slid in beside him, calling out something that he couldn’t understand, pointing at where she had been for someone to follow, but suddenly jerking forward to catch him as he fell, the world going dark again.

She wasn’t there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ~anyway~ we'll see how this turns out xD
> 
> I'D LIKE TO THANK LITERALLY EVERY COMMENTER ON THIS SERIES - I literally save each notification email and open them and look at them like this (๑꒪▿꒪)* for motivation and hearing from everyone just refills my little writer batteries (◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*。 Even when creativity was at it's lowest, whenever I got a notification of a comment I would zip over and just :> read it and get all happy.
> 
> Thank you!


	9. Cooperative Efforts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey again, guys!!
> 
> If you haven't read the last chapter yet, I went back and added a "Last time, on Cardinal King!" thing to the notes before the chapter to catch everyone up! I know it's been... months... between chapter 7 and 8, so I'm hoping that summary can help get you back into the arc without the need to go back and reread things!

**Chapter 9: Cooperative Efforts**

“He passed out,” Kaito called out in the storm, catching and slowly lowering Mamoru to the floor before rolling him onto his back as South approached to guard over them and give him more light, his halberd on fire like a torch. “Any sign of Usagi-chan or Beryl?” he asked as he checked Mamoru over best he could, unable to help the furrowing of his brows as he took in what he was wearing. It was a little more… adventurous than what he was used to seeing Mamoru in. Just what had he been doing?

“They were here,” South confirmed, “I know I heard them and I think I hit Beryl, but there’s no sign of them.” 

“They couldn’t just leave, could they?” North asked rhetorically - how would  _ South _ know if there was another way out of the space-time dimension beyond the door Pluto guarded? Mamoru didn’t look injured - no blood, no cuts, no bruises. “Check around a bit - he looks alright for now, just out.”

South nodded and left, keeping close enough to have an eye on them as he moved; they had found out the hard way that a straight line in this dimension wasn’t  _ always _ a straight line. If it were, they might have been able to get here before it was too late like this. He forcefully breathed evenly, though he wanted to snap at someone for being responsible for this mess. He wanted to chew someone out for being too reckless, for not seeing this coming, for trusting something when it clearly shouldn’t’ve been trusted, but… he knew they had all tried to be careful. And Mamoru had done his best, and he was back and Usagi-chan wasn’t, and yelling at him about rushing in wouldn’t fix anything; they had all thought Beryl was still able to be saved. … He looked too pale. “You see anything?” he called out, taking Mamoru’s pulse, frowning at what he felt. 

“Nothing,” Yuu called out, “They’re not here anymore.”

“Are you sure?” Kaito insisted, looking up to pin Yuu with a look. If they left now, there was no hope of finding this specific place again; if Usagi-chan were still here, they’d be effectively abandoning her to the depths of the space-time dimension forever - Pluto had said as much right before Sailor Moon had taken off anyway after Rin when they found his key discarded on the floor. If Yuu felt with that weird supernatural surety that they were gone, they should held back, fast. 

Yuu looked back at him with a frustrated frown and shot back, “No, but I’m not the one with super-hearing here.” No preternatural surety then. And he felt stupid for having to be reminded. He closed his eyes and listened… but the rumbling of the thunder - both simultaneously far and close - was all he could hear. 

He shook his head. “Nothing. They’re gone. Maybe Pluto will know, but we have to get back as soon as we can - he’s not hurt but he’s not in good shape here.” South hurried over and dropped down on one knee expectantly. “We should’ve brought Nero,” North complained anxiously, hurriedly helping maneuver Mamoru’s unconscious form onto South’s back, “That giant ape’d probably be able to carry him bridal style. You good?” he asked, pressing to keep Mamoru in place as Yuu stood, the other staggering only for a moment until he got the balance figured out.

“We’ll make it,” South assured with quiet confidence, “but we need to get back  _ now _ , and we’ve got a decision to make.” 

Kaito nodded and called out for their little guide - “Gaea?” - and, just like that, the kitten crashed into view out of the storm, green eyes huge against blue fur, the little golden key in his mouth glowing faintly. North picked him up delicately, taking over for South, and gently removed the key from the kitten’s mouth and turned to get a heading. “That way,” he said, pointing and started walking quickly, but South took off at a jog so he caught up and kept the pace he set, juggling between checking the heading with the key and attempting to make sure Mamoru wasn’t jostled around too much while holding on to the kitten.

“Little Lord was here,” Gaea squeaked quickly from his perch in North’s hand, pressed halfway up against his chest for stability, and Kaito internally balked at having forgotten about the kid in the wake of what they had found; they had come here specifically for Rin, but his guilt was only temporary in the wake of immediately finding out what happened to him. If they had more of them with them he wouldn’t’ve forgotten so quickly, but it wasn’t like they could have expected Mamoru to show up out of the blue in the middle of a time storm, anyway. He couldn't have foreseen this. “I saw him but he didn’t hear me calling him,” Gaea continued, “He was running and he had another key - do you think he’s heading back to Sailor Pluto, Kings?”

Another key? …  _ Mamoru _ . He frowned, glaring over at the big oaf. Just how did  _ he _ expect to get back if he gave the kid his key? … which suggested things were just as bad as they had feared. Beryl fighting Sailor Moon; he had seen her change size on the tape, and the pair of them - Usagi and Beryl - had never exactly gotten along, but to attack and then take her? Metallia must have won her over, then. Was it entirely too late? … he had probably sent Rin back with a warning to prepare for the next attack. He might not have expected to make it back at all. That wasn’t grim.

“Probably,” South supplied to the kitten’s question, “With luck we’ll find out soon.”

  
  


...

  
  


It wasn’t exactly “soon,” but it wasn’t before long that they left the storm behind them - his ears practically ringing with the sudden quiet - and saw the door in the distance, its guardian waiting for them anxiously.

“Little Lord returned to the palace with the news,” she said as they slowed down and stopped before her and the gateway back to their dimension, “Sailor Moon?”

South paused, shrugging Mamoru back into place, hesitating, so North answered quickly and succinctly, “Gone, presumably with Beryl. Is there a separate way out of this place?”

“They must have been farther out than I imagined,” Pluto stated with worry, looking back towards the storm on the horizon; “With a large enough power source they may have punched back through to Rin’s time.”

“Where?”

The Guardian of Time shook her head, “It could be anywhere Metallia would feel a connection, but if she’s preparing to attack Crystal Tokyo…” her hands gripped her staff tighter, obviously unhappy with the situation.

“How does time passage work?” Yuu cut in unexpectedly, specifying when Pluto looked like she was going to say something along the lines of ‘it’s complicated’: “Here and our time - Tokyo. If we went back to rest and come up with a better plan, could we come back to this exact moment and continue on as though we had never left?”

… Yuu’s ideas were honestly not bad. Mamoru could recover, they could strategize, and here it’d be as though not even a second had passed -- it’d be the best of a bad situation, not unlike pressing ‘pause’ or saving in a video game only to go back to it after figuring out your next move. Kaito figured this was the ‘decision’ Yuu had hinted at before - if it were viable, he’d be fully for it. There’d be no downside: get in there, grab the Kings and the Senshi, and get out to give them as much time as possible to put whatever they strategized into action upon their return to find and save Usagi  _ and _ Rin’s future.

Pluto eyed him warily, though, her lips a thin line as she shook her head with finality. “Under normal circumstances that may be true, but for the moment your timelines are too intertwined. Too many from your time are here, and if you went back you would be thinking of and planning within this future, the very act of which keeps you connected to it. The passage of time between the two are, for now, linked.” 

Well, there went that plan. “Then there’s no time to waste,” he said, motioning towards the doors; if Beryl had bonded with Metallia then it was only a matter of her finishing preparations before the next attack came; and they had been gone for who knew how long in here; something  _ else _ might have happened -- but when the doors swung open, he was alone in moving towards them. Gaea hopped down and was off in a little blue flash of fur, but South King hesitated beside Pluto. “What?” he asked back, pocketing the time key as he waited for him.

“This fight isn’t ours,” South said, and Kaito gave him a minute to explain himself beyond stating the obvious. “We walked into it naively, and now Mamoru is out and Usagi-chan is gone - if she wasn’t wrapped up in this now, I’d vote to leave. I know that’s not exactly the heroic thing to do, but this future doesn’t belong to us, and if we lose here, that’s it. It’s done. Everything is gone - everything we just fought so hard to come back to - everything he just  _ died to protect and come back to _ ,” he said, shrugging his shoulder and Mamoru along with it. “It’s not fair.”

… this was a far cry from the “we’ll just teleport to him”, “let’s make a barrier”, “he’ll make it back” certainty Yuu’d been showing since the  _ space _ ship, but that was… less than two days ago? Maybe Nero’s blaming him hit deeper than he thought. Kaito was never really all that great with pep talks, so he stepped back beside him, put a hand on his -- er, Mamoru’s -- back, and gently propelled him forward. “When has  _ any of this _ been fair?” he said, looking forward as the scenery through the door changed to a crystalline hall, “He started it, we’ll finish it. We’ll  _ make it _ fair. We’ll find a place to let Mamoru sleep this off, kick Metallia’s ass,--” they stepped through, booted feet landing on crystalline floors, and he turned him towards the direction Gaea had gone, thinking that would get them back to an elevator and more familiar territory, “-- and go rescue Usagi-chan --”

“ _Rescue?!_ ** _”_** a deep feminine voice repeated in surprise, and Kaito felt the air intensify around them even before he turned to see Jupiter’s concern and Venus’s look of absolute _loathing:_

“What do you mean by  _ rescue? _ ”

………………………….

They met in the Control room with a stilled image of human-sized Beryl, taken moments before she disappeared the first time - tastefully edited to omit Mamoru’s hanging form but keeping that creepy mask-wearing lackey on screen - blown up prominently in the middle of tens of other computer windows focused on various avenues in the city, keyed in for sudden movements that would alert them to the arrival of Metallia’s forces as they - the Kings, the Senshi, Rin, and Future-Priest Helios - quickly pieced together what happened. If they had been given more time, Kaito would have wanted to tear more information out of the spectre of the “high priest” about what Mamoru had found out about Metallia’s motives, but with Rin’s confirmation of Beryl’s transformation and their revelation of Usagi-chan missing, the ‘why’ had to give way for the ‘what do we do now’, everyone on edge about what “Queen Beryl” would do next. 

Mamoru was resting in one of the rooms above them - a guest room two doors to the left from where you exit the elevator, to be more precise, and in situations like this, being more precise was somewhat comforting. It wasn’t like they had a whole lot of control over the situation right now - more like they were along for a ride in a car that was midway through crashing - but knowing where his friends were was at least an attempt at balancing the great weight of  _ not knowing _ where the enemy was. Knowing where he was, though, was about the long and short of it. Based on Priest Helios’s assessment, Mamoru was down for the count: Metallia had been draining him dry, and as he had been separated from Earth, he had no means of replenishing his supply of energy. Now that he was back here he would recharge, but the process was strangled by all the Earth energy King Endymion had drawn in to protect those cities, the process apparently reducing free ‘planetary energy’ to near nothing, and if the future King were still under attack wherever he was, that energy would be drawn to his defenses there. Which meant, for the immediate future, Cardinal King was out of the fight. As was Princess Sailor Moon. And Metallia had fully consumed Beryl. 

Things weren’t in their favor.

To their credit, the Senshi did not  _ once _ outwardly say that they never should have come. What had happened on their end was that when they - he and Yuu - had radioed after Rin, Usagi-chan and two of the other Senshi took a break from helping with the refugees to go look for him, with the understanding that no one would leave the castle; Usagi-chan had run into them when Gaea was leading them to the time door, so she got the full story from Pluto about how she had not seen Rin, and was there when the Guardian had negated their idea of using the key in Mamoru’s possession to locate him. In their discussion, though, Pluto’s activation of her “garnet rod” had pinged off of a discarded key just out of sight of the door, and when she identified it as Rin’s, Gaea and Usagi-chan had taken off towards the storm brewing beyond the key, even after hearing that if she got lost in it she may never find her way back. They followed after her, scooping up Gaea as he paused to grab the discarded key, but in that moment and the way space works there, they lost Usagi-chan to the gathering clouds. They had called after her, eventually  _ heard _ her speaking to someone - Beryl, her voice deeper and wider than they were used - but when they finally reached them, Usagi-chan was gone. 

Rin was horrified from the moment he heard Usagi-chan had chased after him, his small hands holding Gaea close, but when it came to his turn he dutifully repeated for their sakes - his and South’s - what he had told the others and his mother: that Beryl had been with Mamoru, but she wasn’t a fairy, and thought he was someone else and got mad when he wasn’t, and blamed Puu, and then she changed and became redder and had horns and called herself “Queen Beryl of Rose Tokyo”, and Mamoru told him to go back and warn everyone. Since his return, they’ve been shoring up their defenses as best they could, but with Beryl as her vessel, their only real hope against Metallia was in the Silver Crystal. It had held her off once before, it could do so again, and with Usagi-chan missing, Neo-Queen Serenity held the entirety of that hope. 

“Where would she have taken her?” Venus asked coldly of Helios, “You said he had been kept on a meteoroid? Have you found it yet?”

The ghostly form of Helios turned towards her, “I understand your concern and sympathize with what you are going though, but  _ no. _ If this palace falls, so does  _ the world; _ we simply do not have the resources to spend in search of it; when Metallia falls, finding Usagi-chan will be our first priority -”

“Mercury,” Venus called, and the blue-suited sailor soldier’s visor spread from one earring as her computer materialized in her hand, and as she typed some of the video feeds on screen changed from surveillance to data streams.

Kaito looked to the others for their response; should they be stopping this? Khalid looked to Venus warily, but made no move.

“I’ve got orbital paths of known NEO’s, asteroids, KBO’s and inner-system orbital comets; observations from the last month have yet to be compiled. If there is an object out of place I believe I can find it, but it will take some time.”

“Use a portion of the computing power in here,” Venus directed -

“The faster we know an attack is coming the faster we can respond!” Helios protested heatedly, moving symbolically between Mercury and the command bank in front of her, “Taking any of these sensors offline could be the difference between life and  _ death -” _

_ “Waiting _ could be the difference between life and death!” Mars snapped. Jupiter put a hand on her shoulder and the black-haired girl crossed her arms but said no more. 

And then, throwing fuel on the fire, Helios appeared -  _ their _ Helios - cracking into existence in the middle of them with a warning -  _ “Metallia is on Earth! She’s at her base at the North Pole!” _

Helios - the ghost - turned, “You found her base?!” 

_ “I covertly followed remnants of her minions from that last fight back to it and was scoping it out when they all started talking about her suddenly arriving not long ago - they’re preparing for another strike!”  _ Helios turned towards the monitors,  _ “It couldn't have been an hour ago - I ran into some trouble and had to teleport around to lose them and it took a few jumps to get this far; they could be on their way now -” _

“An hour?” Venus confirmed, ice-blue eyes turning on him. 

He knew what she wanted to know: whether it was feasible Beryl had gone immediately to this base of hers with Usagi-chan, and whether the timeline fit. He supposed she’d be familiar enough with that place for it to meet Pluto’s criteria, but honestly he had no idea how the time worked out. “She probably could have gone there, but I couldn’t tell you how time worked in that dimension. It fits with our experience.”

“Which North Pole?” Mercury asked, display screens still flashing through data even as she turned towards them, the numbers racing across her visor suddenly gone.

Helios considered a moment, closing his eyes before reporting,  _ “Magnetic.” _

Mercury started typing on her computer, watching it as she followed Mars out of the room -

Jupiter paused, catching Venus’s elbow to keep her back. She spoke quietly but he could hear it clear as day - a benefit of Tamonten’s blessing:  _ “The Queen? I don’t think she should be fighting in her condition. It could be any minute now - are we really leaving her?” _

Venus looked up at the taller girl and Kaito felt the other Kings - save West - looking at him for some sort of clue - but Venus glanced back at them before she said even quieter,  _ “We failed her once already. She’s with the enemy and the enemy wants her dead. We can’t teleport unless we are all together and we can’t leave her there.” _ she paused,  _ “If she’s not there we’ll teleport back.” _

They were leaving them alone in the defense of Crystal Tokyo. He wasn’t exactly surprised: their alliance hadn’t been fully formed or solidified on anything other than their association with Usagi-chan and Usagi-chan was gone. But where does that leave this place? He didn’t know anything about the Queen’s condition - he assumed Helios had meant she was tired from her fight against the last version of Metallia; if she weren’t up to her full power and Beryl was a stronger host, they would need as many people as they could muster to fight this thing. With half their powerset leaving for the pole, their chances were cut drastically. 

… but maybe the pole was where they should go. 

“Take us with you,” North called, crossing his arms. The pair looked back at him with that look of distaste for eavesdroppers, but with their attention - and everyone else’s - he continued. “Metallia isn’t expecting to be attacked at her own base. If we bring the fight to her and we all go in together and in full force, we could surprise her into an easier defeat, no matter what size she gets to. The Queen wouldn’t have to use so much of her energy that way, and the people in the Palace would be safe.” 

Including their unconscious friend. 

Jupiter looked to Venus, shaking her head minutely, so he pushed - “If her whole army’s there you’d have to get through  _ all of them _ to even begin to hope to find Usagi-chan - you need help. They’re  _ people, _ remember? You need me and East to cleanse them or you’ll end up hurting innocents - Usagi-chan wouldn’t want that. Maybe defeating Metallia would reverse the transformations made on them all at once. Going up against her together with the Queen is the smarter move here -”

“The Queen shouldn’t be going anywhere,” the ghostly High Priest cut in.

“Give his plan a chance,” Nero said, “It’s not chess - she can leave the castle and this plan sounds good: a surprise attack wouldn’t be something she expected. She’s just Usagi but older, right? She’d agree to this - just ask her.”

“Whether she’d agree to it or not is beyond the point,” Helios replied. “Teleporting, fighting,  _ running - _ ”

“She’s pregnant,” Venus cut in sharply, and suddenly ‘her condition’ took on a whole new meaning. She tapped Jupiter on the shoulder and preceded her out of the room.

Jupiter continued, turning back to them, avoiding the ghost-Helios, “She’s too close due to risk anything like that. She’s on bedrest from the stress and using too much of the Crystal’s power. She’s in no condition to go anywhere. If she tries to use the Crystal again, we don’t know what will happen. Her mother ran, but she wasn’t nearly as far along when she did.” She paused, looking away from all of them as she shook her head, “We’re going to save our Serenity - Usagi-chan - and get out through the time-stream. If she’s gone, _ really _ gone,” her voice wavered and she cleared her throat, “then we’ll come back for the Queen and get her out. You may want to evacuate while you still can.” She turned to follow Venus.

“So you’re just giving up on this place?” East asked in quiet disbelief.

Jupiter stopped in the doorway, wiping at her face before she said back, barely turning her head, “What other option is there?”

  
  


\--------------------------------

  
  


What other option is there…? 

To fight. 

He paused, thinking quickly and not exactly liking the odds. They’d be putting all their eggs in one basket, and the basket had a  _ lot _ of holes, but between that and  _ running _ there weren't a whole lot of choices. “Let’s go with them,” he said, turning towards his friends even as he half-walked, half-ran, mostly-shuffled backwards towards the door, leaning them on. “If Usagi-chan is there, she could fight Metallia before Metallia gets here and she’d be fighting with all of our support - Heavenly Kings and Senshi alike. If she’s not there, we could still give it a shot - our predecessors/future selves/ _ whatever,  _ didn’t have the Shitennou’s blessings on top of their original abilities - and we have a better chance of overpowering her if we work together, right? And it’s  _ us _ \- maybe Mamoru was too touchy a person to trust for her, with that “Rose Tokyo Queen” nonsense in her head it was too uphill a battle to start with. We’re more neutral but still originally on her side, we could get through to her, or confuse her enough to take advantage of a weakness.” 

They were following him, expressions various shades of commitment to this idea, but they were with him nevertheless. “If we’re there, even if Usagi-chan isn’t, if we can pin Metallia there maybe the Senshi will help us anyway. We could do this, and if we can’t we can always just teleport back to Mamoru before it’s too late, right?” he said, looking to Yuu for confirmation: he had no concrete understanding of how their teleportation works, but they had been able to teleport to help him before, so it would make sense if they could do it again; whether he need be conscious was the question. 

South did not look as confident, but he nodded, and Kaito took that as  _ mostly  _ sure that’s how it could work. Senshi could apparently teleport where they needed to go so long as they had a lock on it; they could teleport to Mamoru so long as they had a lock on him. That call the first time -- was that necessary? “Can you contact him?” he asked of Priest Helios as they continued down marble hallways; West took the lead, his blue gem out and focused on something, and North let him, trusting he was leading them towards where the Senshi were setting up. 

“He’s in no condition to be awakened yet --” the Priest started to reply, but Kaito hadn’t  _ asked that  _ and his expression must have said as much, “-- but he is dreaming, and I can pull him out as soon as our sensors pick up any high energy source, but I’m hoping it won’t come to that.” Their Helios - the flying unisus - looked confused but he was keeping up with things without protest, which Kaito appreciated. They didn’t have time to explain everything over again, not when the Senshi were intent on leaving immediately. 

“Yeah, well,  _ same. _ ” How nice would it be to get there and everything just falls into place perfectly? … or even imperfectly - they had made a barrier to keep those creatures out before, could they make it to keep Metallia  _ in? _ Like some sort of giant evil baby-pen --

“Venus!” West called as he threw open the doors to a courtyard and they broke through, and while Venus stood resolute, her hands in Mars’s and Mercury’s, Jupiter glanced back and the power that had amassed around them faded. The Kings, led by West, didn’t stop until they were right outside their little circle. “We’re coming with you,” West announced, “North’s plan is the right of it - it’s the best chance we have at saving this place. The Queen may not be able to make it, but if Usagi-chan is there she will want to fight, and you’ll need us there as backup when she does.”

“We can’t carry four extra people,” Venus denied, not looking at him, “We can manage one at most --”

“We can help power it,” South stated, finally saying something with that calm and clear certainty. He stepped forward and, after a glance to Venus, Mercury released Jupiter’s hand, and South inserted himself there. “Just like we did before, but let them direct it,” he ordered, and before they could change their minds or think on it further, East took Jupiter’s other hand and Mars’s, taking up the East position to Yuu’s South. He picked up the pattern, taking the hands of Mars and Venus, and Khalid took position between Venus and Mercury to complete the enlarged circle with the cardinal points locked in.

“Mercury’s got the position,” Venus stated, and as one the senshi took in a breath and closed their eyes in concentration; Kaito followed their lead, and as pressure grew on either side of him he focused on recalling that feeling they had built up before, a half-meditative state in calling up the powers of the North and giving them to be used in this effort. While it had happened only once before, he still somehow managed to miss the feeling of West’s metallic elements on his left and East’s earth on his right, but before long the pressure grew so that he could barely notice anything else.

_ “Good luck, everyone,” _ Helios - their Helios - said as the power reached a crescendo.

The hands in his held tighter and then it felt like his whole body went up in static.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I *almost* didn't go through with the whole "NQS is super-pregnant and that's why she's not exactly effective right now and why she and KE didn't go out to take care of this together in the first place" but .-. I guess I went ahead and did it, hahahahah XD ((yes it's a girl)) ((...will she be more chibi-usa or kousagi? idk I just know it's a girl)) ((... >) and Metallia may be in search of a new host soon *i'm just sayin'*))
> 
> Ugh having the senshi not only be ok with noping out but were actively planning to was also one of those "what the hell am I doing right now???" moments but, like -- they failed her *three times*. Once in their past lives in being unable to prevent her death, again in the present when they believed Diana and allied themselves against the citizens of Earth for *revenge*, and then, in their minds, /again/ when they only reawakened when it was too late in the Archons showdown. They just got her back - they just found her again, and in a moment of carelessness, Usagi (their precious *Serenity*) was taken from them again by an enemy who specifically has it in for her bloodline. Screw the world, they can't lose her. Not again. ... imagine if she's already dead though and they had to go back to Crystal Tokyo and effectively kidnap NQS and Rin as their new Serenity charge and just :D how angsty man. ANYWAY!
> 
> These poor dudes, I'm just saying. And maybe Nero'll bring it up when all this is over but, like, in the span of a week and a day they fought enemies from their past, their present, and their future, in potential apocalyptic battles. Maybe I should've spread the fights out farther but, like, *help it made sense* with Rin appearing right after they got back, which pushed up the Archon timeline to *right now* and with the senshi awakening it would only make sense for Rin to be all "being here almost killed my dad and mission accomplished so bye" and the doom and gloom girls appearing to go along with the ride back to the future and that????  
> Listen I owe the boys gift baskets, I understand.  
> I'll give them like a gap year or something before throwing arc four at them. 
> 
> ANYWAY THANK YOU FOR READING!


	10. Down and Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the shortest chapter to date!! Sorry about that! ♥

The creature, enormous and wide-eyed and reaching, crept towards him in leaps and bounds through the black tunnel of its own creation, the path laid towards a place it could not be allowed to reach. Behind him was everything he loved and needed to protect. Before him was a monster that literally ate anything he threw at it and became stronger for it. He was tired. His blood burned, his lungs shuddered with every breath. He couldn’t give up. Its mouth opened in a soundless scream to reveal an enormous tongue and sharpened teeth, lips peeling back into a cruel smile, and as he called forth the physical form of the Golden Crystal, a voice ripped into this head, ancient and creaking - 

**_“Your powers are exhausted, your weapon is useless, and you stand entirely alone, Crystal Bearer. Rest and let me pass.”_ **

“I am not alone, and I will not let you pass!” he yelled back defiantly, and as he threw out his own energy from the crystal it was as though he connected himself to the advancing creature with a golden thread, and the creature caught it and pulled itself forward along it, the smile growing, gigantic eyes widening and focusing on him -

**_“I see no one else here. You are alone, and you have always been alone -”_ **

“That’s not --”

 **_“You will die alone! You_ ** **have** **_died alone! You ended the world for fear of loneliness and what did it bring you? Orphaned and friendless, without even memory of your parents to keep you company until your past caught back up to you! And even then how did that conflict resolve? With you. Alone.”_ **

That wasn’t true. He hadn’t been alone - he was there with… he fought Diana with… 

He couldn’t remember. 

**_“In this skirmish, too, your companions left you. One by one, putting more and more on your shoulders alone in this fight. Do you know why they returned? With what purpose? Do you know what has been offered them for their cooperation in this coup? Power. Immunity. The ability to chase their dreams again in being freed from_ ** **you.** **_They returned not to help you, Crystal Bearer, but to bury you.”_ **

That wasn’t… that wasn’t true. The monster before him continued leaping forward in jerking motions, the tether between them drawn tight; behind him something pulled but he couldn’t move, couldn’t look away from that gaping maw as it lurched closer and grew larger - 

**_“Would they have remained by your side had your planet not been chosen for this operation? Undoubtedly, but for what purpose? Loyalty? Fealty? Or fear that you will end the world with your powers should they return to their lives?! How do they see you, Crystal Bearer? Friend or inevitable destructor? An explosive force to be handled with great caution? Why do you think they let you come here, closed off from them and your world, to face me, if not to let me kill you?!”_ **

That force at his back again pulled, but it was weak and the monster was nearly upon him. He pushed more energy through their connection, but with the god’s ancient and wrinkled head bigger now than a three story building and his hands pushing at the wormhole to expand it before him, he knew it was too late. 

**_“You are alone and unwanted!”_ ** the creature yelled into his mind as the enormous mouth closed around him, swallowing him in a rush of absolute darkness and doubt.

  
  
  
  


He failed. 

He let it through. 

Had they allowed this to happen? His friends? He couldn’t… he couldn’t remember.

Had they even been friends, or had he been delusional all along?

He had always been alone. 

He couldn’t remember his parents. He had a picture of them, but the couple was familiar only in that it was his picture of them - static, unmoving, without background or history. Not a reminder of the place, the activity, or their voices. He had no feeling for them but distant loss and respect, and while growing up he had accepted it as just part of life - it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, but at least he had nothing to miss, unlike others in that children’s institution - but now that he knew the circumstances of his past life he had to wonder: were their deaths because of him, as divine punishment for restarting the world? 

He didn’t make friends easily in elementary school, and he knew most of that was the stigma surrounding his circumstances - kids were either too nice and disingenuous, politely ignored him, or outright ridiculed him, and he started getting used to being lonely. Middle school wasn’t much better, but he turned out to be pretty good at sports and that opened a few doors for him, and while playing he got to be part of a group. He only really started to break away from the effects of that past when he got into private school at Moto-Azabu and some of the funds his parents left behind opened to him, allowing him to move into his own place, but by then he was used to being on his own. Classmates were classmates, teammates were teammates - he was polite and respectful, and gave assistance when requested and went in to help when someone was in need, but companionship was at arms-length and that was fine. 

And when he met someone that challenged him and bothered him and _pulled at him_ and he wanted to get to know better and spend more time with, he didn’t know how to get past their initial interactions. It was really only when she went back to her arcade or her shopping or flipped her twin tails of hair and headed for home that he realized the feeling of being alone wasn’t necessarily a constant force, but one that he wasn’t really equipped to move through. 

And that was fine. He could do without. He handled it, and could handle it again.

But then Helios inserted himself into his life and he suddenly had a roommate and a purpose for keeping consistently engaged with someone. He had reason to be there - it wasn’t a relationship naturally made by any means, but even if it were centered around defeating the Dark Kingdom, he had felt like their friendship had been real. And then there was Hanada Kaito who, while challenging and sarcastic and quippy, quickly started inviting him out to do things beyond checking out potential Dark Kingdom targets and training and he thought they got on really well. Moegi Yuu had always complained about being too busy to do anything, and protested late-night meetings and training, but he always showed up, and even came unannounced to a few of his games, same as he had attended a few of his public debate tournaments; he was good at hiding things, but could Mamoru have really missed signs that all of it had been a show? Midori Nero was a boisterous handful from the beginning, but he was bad at lying and overly affectionate - but then he was the type never to have met a stranger, so maybe he was just like that with everyone, no matter how close. But he was too genuine for that. … and all of that happened _before_ he was the Prince. They’d had no reason to be disingenuous back then. And Kaito Khalid, constant and calm and occasionally infuriating - while he had apparently always known, and Mamoru could see him sticking around for something like what Demiurge suggested, he _knew_ just thinking that would hurt and disappoint him. Khalid was his friend. 

They were _all_ his friends.

The darkness around him lessened as he realized that he hadn’t actually been alone in _months_ \- not since they found each other again. There were moments when he was by himself, moments when he missed them, when they were taken from him, but he had never been _alone,_ and neither were they - not while he was there. Being alone was something he feared and yet had accepted as the truth of his life: something he could never work around, something that he had seen as inevitable and unavoidable, and yet there they were, destroying that old belief and unobtrusively making their own.

The light grew, his skin starting to glow gold in greyspace as the dark insecurities of that god were burned away. Yes, he fought Diana alone, but only because they were supporting him, letting him through to where he needed to be. They had to get the senshi’s power gems back before it was too late, and he had to save… 

He had to save Usako.

The light around him flared to shatter against the bounds of what surrounded him as the last of Demiurge’s lies were swept away, Usagi’s presence crashing back into his mind and heart unexpectedly and filling up the last pieces of him to bursting. _Usako_ , with her stubborn stomping and endless strawberry parfaits, her lazy complaining and boundless compassion, filled with life and love and laughter and constantly wearing her heart on her sleeve and, through some miracle he’d never truly understand, _wanting him_ the same way he wanted her. That she was Jewel Tiara -- that she was somehow _Serenity_?! 

He hadn’t _been_ alone against Diana - she had been with him! She had even sealed Queen Serenity away - he had backed her up, offered her his support and helped her harness her powers, kept her grounded and used his powers to help shape hers, but ultimately she had done it: they had defeated the Queen together. 

The same as his friends had defeated Demiurge _with him_ : their powers had joined with him when it mattered most, and they had defeated that god before _any_ of this had happened. If they had sided with the Archons they never would have reappeared when he called for them, they wouldn’t have formed the barrier to give him this chance, and they never would have sent their power to back him up when he needed it most! 

None of this was real - he had already lived through this nightmare and come out the other side. This was something false. Demiurge was gone, taking in more power than it could handle and destroying itself in the process. ...and him. And he suddenly remembered then what had happened after: waking up in her arms, surrounded by his friends and Rin, in a uniform that matched theirs in an unspoken promise that they were still together in this and that they wouldn’t back down from… what was coming...

A piercing light made him squint and turn his head away as a thin, sharp object broke through the boundary surrounding him and sliced through, and while he felt a hand grabbing for him from behind, he instead fell through the hole the shining object had created…

  
  
  
  


“Demiurge’s nightmares will stick with you for years,” a voice called, and, suddenly in a beautiful garden surrounded on three sides in sheer clear crystal, Mamoru turned to find the source. “Or, at least mine did. Though its contents were far different, and, as it turns out, prophetic.” He found the speaker with the pained voice seated on a crystalline bench backed by beautiful roses, and he froze in recognition. 

It was… him. Almost. Just fully grown: taller still, his frame filled out, and while he looked no older than thirty, his eyes - the same shade of blue he saw in mirrors - carried a weight in them that belied his otherwise youthful appearance. He sat casually on the bench, his legs crossed and his hands spread on either side of him, though the one on the crystalline bench rail beside him had the crystal golden-tinged and growing up his arm; the other stretched behind him along the back of the bench and held a red rose from the bush behind him, though the thorned vine encircled and crept up his arm similarly. “I would have preferred not to meet you like this,” he said as Mamoru took him in, “but as I believe we were never meant to meet at all, and considering the circumstances, I’m glad to be given this chance.” He paused, taking him in to nearly the same degree Mamoru was, “I’m truly sorry that this became your problem after everything else that happened, and so recently for you, too. You can come closer, if you like, and rest here for a while. We are nowhere near our physical forms so proximity shouldn’t be an issue.”

Proximity…? The golden crystals reacting to each other, he realized. He looked around to see if there were anywhere else to sit, to keep a polite distance, but there was nothing: just the bright gardens, dirt path, and the world falling away on the side the other faced. There was the soft roar of a waterfall, and with another look he spotted a small river flowing at a distance to his left towards the edge. This was… an opportunity, at the very least, and so he obliged, walking carefully over to his older self and lightly taking a seat on the other side of the bench, attempting to keep his composure despite processing reality against what the dream had shown him, slowly recalling everything since that faceoff with Demiurge in quick succession, his anxiety growing as he did. “King Endymion,” he greeted with a vice around his heart, the most recent memories coming to the surface: Beryl as Metallia, Rin running for help, _Usako…_ He glanced at him once before politely looking at that open space that seemed to show only the skies and quickly asked, “Are we in Elysion?” trying to think ahead, to try to plan where to go once he woke up, how to handle the threat to Rin’s future and to _her_ -

“...Elysion-adjacent,” the King modified, and he moved slightly; Mamoru followed the move to see him twitch the rose held tightly in one of his hands. “When I sensed that nightmare I knew Helios would have difficulties in pulling you out, so I monitored and did what I could when you had weakened it enough on your own. Truthfully, you didn’t need me at the end,” he said with a hint of something like a smile.

He quickly nodded, accepting what he had to say, and while he knew there was no time for this - whether King Endymion realized that or not - the mention that the dream had turned out to be prophetic was something he couldn’t write off, and in that same vein he had questions that his future-self may be uniquely able to answer that he had to ask before he left: “Your nightmare turned out to be prophetic, you said,” he repeated, looking to him fully to gauge his reaction, even if his older self felt he was not at liberty to say the answer, “In mine I fought alone and lost, my friends unable to help; is this foreshadowing what may come to pass against that threat Taishakuten warned against? Is Metallia that threat?”

“Taishakuten?” King Endymion had met his eyes, but all Mamoru saw there was confusion, and curiosity, and within him the growing anxiety at this detour was joined with similar emotions. Had this version of himself never met the Lord of the Center, or had it been so long ago that he had forgotten? … Mamoru could not believe the latter possible, considering the circumstances; but then… their circumstances in that fight had not been the same. Endymion attempted to answer, though without memory of that interaction the response did not provide the insight that Mamoru had hoped for. “In my nightmare I am unable to protect her, and, because of Metallia, I am in that exact situation, but I may have been hasty in labeling it prophetic; it may not be the same for you.”

 _Or it may well be_. 

He stood - if this Endymion hadn’t met the Lord of the Center he couldn’t give him any insight on what was heading their way, and if the nightmare was coincidental he could deal with it. And with even such a short description of this version’s nightmare, he knew he didn’t want to know more about it, especially considering -- “I have to wake up,” he said, “Can I do it from here?”

“You can’t,” King Endymion replied.

“Then I need to get to Elysion --”

“You can’t wake up,” Endymion interjected, and Mamoru waited tensely for him to follow up that statement with a reason. He wasn’t dead - he _refused_ to entertain that idea - and with Usako taken by someone who _literally wanted to kill her_ there was no reason good enough to keep him sleeping. “There’s not enough energy,” Endymion clarified, “I’m sending as much as I can, but it’s not enough - not yet.”

“What do you mean, _not enough energy?_ ” Mamoru asked, rejecting his reason - it was _Earth_ , it didn’t have an end to its energy, or - well, it _had_ to, but not one that they could possibly reach. The concern Helios held was in the amount of energy flowing through him, not in how much energy remained to Earth, and, given the circumstances, quickly filling himself with energy from Earth was a risk he was willing to make. Endymion had to have misspoken -- “I need to get back to them! Beryl has Usako, Metallia is preparing for another attack. I have no idea how long I was in that nightmare and every second is necessary!”

Endymion… was pale. He had missed it before - he had been keeping such a calm composure it was easy to overlook, but the King of Crystal Tokyo was nowhere near as peaceful as he appeared, his countenance slipping as he replied, “Metallia has returned to her base at the North Pole and is collecting her supporters. The Sailor Senshi and the others from your era arrived there minutes ago. I did not know that Beryl was involved; I cannot track her, but I can say that your Serenity is not on Earth. Your body is in Crystal Tokyo, along with two hundred fifteen survivors, your Helios, my son, my Serenity, and our unborn daughter. If you leave now, you’ll barely have enough energy to stand, let alone be of any help to anyone. I’d like to keep you here and let your body restore itself for a while longer. If the forces at the pole fail, you may be Earth’s only hope. In the meantime I’m trying to free up more energy for you to pull from and send to you, but with keeping everyone in stasis it’s taking some time to shift the power around without making sacrifices.”

Sacrifices? … stasis? _Unborn daughter?_ … Mamoru sat back down, his eyes shifting back and forth as he tried to retain the information thrown at him. He asked a few clarifying questions - if he was unable to even _walk_ while awake, there was little use in continuing to push for that. The very idea of sacrifices being made in order to wake him up and have him ready was unnerving. “Who is being supported in stasis? Your Kings and Senshi?” he thought back to that chamber the balcony had overlooked, with the eight bodies on pedestals with their arms by their sides or crossed atop their chests, a sight he had not beheld for long but had stayed with him regardless.

“Everyone,” the King replied, staring out over the edge of the gardenscape, and with a glance from Mamoru he elaborated. “On Earth. Save those in Crystal Tokyo.” Mamoru… found that difficult to believe. How? How was that even possible? But. beyond that, even if he put that question aside, another awaited:

“Why not Crystal Tokyo?”

The King was quiet.

“Did you still think they could have defeated her? Those who were still awake when you were taken?” he prompted. 

_“Maybe,”_ the King all but whispered, and Mamoru turned his attention to the man - his older self, though time may not tie them directly anymore - and found there someone without an answer. After a moment, he made an attempt at an explanation. “When it happened, I didn’t control the crystal - it reacted. It shielded me, and in that instant before my consciousness shifted to this place, I brought everyone else in on it: every living thing I could sense on this planet through psychometry. I tethered their lifeforces to Earth’s energy,” he shifted his left shoulder, that connected to this place through the golden-hued crystal, “and when I realized it worked, I directed their sleeping consciousnesses to Elysion.” The rosebush. “But none of them appeared here; no one in Crystal Tokyo was brought in. And in the time since it happened, I’ve wondered why. Maybe I did think that they still had a chance, and the crystal avoided them for that, or maybe part of me was worried about exit strategy; I don’t know how to get out of this.” He shook his head, looking forward, “I’ve tried, and now the solar storms are too strong to try again - it’d be too dangerous for them. And maybe, still, it could have had nothing to do with me at all, but rather another quirk of the Silver Crystal. 

“Regardless, I’ve been tethered here the past three months, sensing through the planet their movements, their triumphs and defeats. After Serenity drove Metallia away that last time I thought that could have been it, but it wasn’t. I was trying to save up power to attempt to bring Crystal Tokyo in when our Little Lord went missing a week ago, Metallia with him.” He turned to Mamoru then, and said earnestly, “Thank you for watching over him.”

He nodded. 

They were quiet, Mamoru attempting to think around the lack of energy situation, rather than focusing on _Usako not being on Earth_ , which meant she was on that comet. Alone. _And alive. She had to be alive. They had been arguing - Metallia wasn’t going to let Beryl do it. She had to be alive._ But eventually he couldn’t stand it - he couldn’t know what she was doing, only that he _knew_ she’d be doing her best, same as the rest of them, and the rest of them was something he could ask after: “What’s happening at the pole?” he asked, his voice coming out a little more forceful than intended. 

“They’re fighting,” Endymion reported, “working their way towards Metallia. Their glow, are they…?” his question trailed off.

“The Kings,” he nodded, “something that happened in our fight against the Archons. Kai--” he paused, mentally swapping to their old names, which they were apparently using again in this time, “Zoisite is dark green, Nephrite is orange, Jadeite is red, and Kunzite is light blue. The Senshi?”

“With them, also going for Metallia. It’s powerful -”

“It’s got Beryl.”

Endymion made a short hum, accepting and analyzing the information. 

Mamoru took in a breath to explain to get his mind onto another problem when Endymion spoke again -

“They’ve engaged her.”


	11. The Pole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Heavenly Kings head to the Pole in an effort to save Beryl and take out Metallia before it's too late.

**Chapter 11: The Pole**

Well, he didn’t exactly understand how they got there, but he knew what they were going to do there and he was one hundred percent behind that:

They were going to kick some ass.

When they touched down in arctic snow and ice he waited for instructions, angling towards Khalid to close their ranks - he understood what Kaito had meant originally, but that was with the Queen helping and the senshi with them and that didn’t seem to be exactly the case anymore, despite the senshi getting them there. It didn’t sit right with him that they were just giving up, but it helped a little that Jupiter, at least, seemed bothered by it, too, and, who knew, maybe their showing up and attempting to do something productive would encourage them not to give up so easily. He wasn’t looking forward to fighting against Beryl, but if it would knock some sense into her they had little choice otherwise. Before the senshi could take off, Kaito called over to Mercury and he peeked over their shoulders to see the little mini-computer screen and a bunch of dots and arrows probably meaning enemies ahead and pretty soon Venus and Khalid and Kaito were “discussing” what should be done, but with the general understanding that any captives (and leaders) would probably be in the middle of all of that for the best protection, they were quickly off, heading towards the giant mass of humans-turned-monsters. 

Knowing that they were human meant they couldn’t outright _fight them_ -fight them, it was more like… fight to incapacitate them, or knock them off course or bar them from getting in their way -- which meant their polearms were _really useful_. The anti-brainwashing items would’ve been great if they could somehow usher the unbrainwashed people to safety, but that wasn’t possible here so instead they acted like… well, firefighters? Kinda? He and Kaito used their weapons to erect giant walls of stone and ice and push the hordes back (how useful would this have been last week?!) on either side and just… _push it_ back to clear a path in the middle. It wasn’t something they found out they could do immediately, and once they found out they could do it, it wasn’t exactly quick or stealthy, either, and they were soon the stars of the North Pole! Come one, come all, come fight the Heavenly Kings! … But their instant-wall idea was kinda game-breaking in that the little guys were just… pushed out of the way and locked out of the encounter, and that was that. The more they used it, too, the better they got -- before long he could split the rock wall and push it to either side, so it was like a sweeping motion? Anyway, easy peasy, and the others were taking care of any that were able to get in from behind or actually made it over the wall -- just knocking them out, nothing else -- and with Mercury and Khalid giving them the lay of the land ahead of them they made it towards this frozen castle base thing that was down in this giant crevasse without too much trouble and that’s where the senshi split to go find Usagi-chan. 

They were going to follow them - it would make sense that the final boss was also in the castle with the captured princess, right? - but just as they ran off into the depths, some of those creeps from the control room videos appeared, jumping over the cliffs they made around the keep and landing like the big-wigs they apparently were, and mini-bosses usually traveled around with the main boss, so chances were Beryl was _out there_ somewhere, rather than down there somewhere. 

Truthfully, he should have waited to hear them out. But… well, two of them had been distractions while Mamoru was taken out from beneath their noses and he honestly didn’t care to hear any sort of bad-guy speech from them, so he went in swinging with his trusty rock knuckles, creating craters where one managed to evade him. Khalid yelled out instructions and he targeted the one he pointed out for him to take out - the magnet girl - and he was _overjoyed_ at the idea of her finding out the hard way that he didn’t need metal to kick her ass. Honestly, with so many combatants going at once, it felt chaotic in a way that felt nostalgic in that weird Golden Kingdom sense, but he trusted his friends and kept his eyes open to duck around the odd explosion between the exploding one and Yuu, the shards of frozen metal from Kaito and the melty-one, and _the metal-piercing exploding ballistic round_ from the powerhouse Khalid was dealing with - honestly, once he made this over-flexible pigtailed disaster down, he knew he’d be heading there next. 

His fight was made a little less easier with all the flying metallic debris as she could just pull it out of the air from wherever to throw it at him and he couldn’t pull that new nifty armor on with her able to do that, so he was stuck with dodging and ducking and punching it out of the way, which was tiring and was, frankly, her best option for a plan. … But she didn’t count on teamwork. One call - “North!” and an ice wall appeared to block the incoming shrapnel and _boom!_ Punch to the face, she’s flying into one of the rock arena walls. She made a crater and her body actually _stuck there_. … so maybe he shouldn’t have punched so hard, but she was still breathing and as he watched, her arm actually lifted to try to push herself back up, so he pulled the cheap finishing move in summoning his trident and erecting another wall just in front of her, trapping her in there. With a space between the two, of course: he wasn’t going to _suffocate_ her or anything, just wanted to keep her out of the game. 

He caught his breath for half a moment before concentrating to call up the full armor of the Lord of the East and ran back into it with his nifty new sword to help Khalid with the armor-piercing exploding bullet dude. 

Five minutes? Maybe? Later, exhausted, they trapped the last of them - Metallia’s Generals - to make sure they wouldn’t just get up and cause problems for them later. It hurt to breathe, but that was probably all the exercise in the short period of time, right? He just needed a minute. They were quiet, catching their breath, but once Khalid straightened up, they followed suit. He jumped to the top of the walls they made to block off the castle and Nero groaned and, rather than jumping, just pulled his trident out again and pulled more rock out to make an elevator up to the top for the rest of them. “So... where’s Beryl then?” he asked, still catching his breath as he yanked the tri-tips from the layer of permafrost. 

“You really... have to ask?” Kaito shot back, breathing heavily, and when he looked up he had to admit it was a really dumb question.

There she was. Huge. Like, suddenly sky-scraper tall with blue-green skin and dark red hair literally streaming _into the sky_ with horns on her shoulders and pointed ears and a killer red dress and wingless but still obviously their annoying fairy. She was like three football fields away with an army between them and moving out quickly -- presumably in the general direction of Japan and Crystal Tokyo. Great. Ok. 

“Ok so she’s a little bigger than we expected,” he said, “but that doesn’t change anything.” he let out a long breath, pointed his trident out, and jumped down to bring the next path up - he’d just make a raised walkway instead of wading through all that, and any of the brainwashed people that came up with him could just be knocked off the side by the others. No big deal. Exhausting, but no big deal. … and eventually he started jumping further rather than making a continuous path - they could jump _really far,_ they didn’t need a straight-up path. 

About halfway through the ninja lady made her appearance and that was _annoying,_ but his friends eventually took care of her - Yuu made a flamethrower to keep her in one general area and Khalid cut her down and that was that. When they got close enough to Beryl, a tidal wave rose up and barreled towards them, but North threw him aside to freeze it solid with his spear, and Yuu melted the ice to give them a corridor to travel through and out the other side to slide down into the open, Tethys inadvertently creating an arena wall to block them off from the rest of Metallia’s army. Tethys reappeared - all creepy mask and bodysuit - and South broke off from them:

“Use your items! You can get through to her!” he called in that specific “certain” tone before bounding off after Metallia’s final general, his throwing knives and fire maybe not the best defense against someone who throws water about, but… North had that little pagoda, and he had the lute, and Khalid had the history with her. Yuu… South would be alright. Now was their chance to end this without any other hardships - not for Rin, or for this future, or Usagi-chan or Mamoru. They could stop this before it even left this frozen wasteland and put anyone else in danger, and if Yuu said they could do it, they could do it: they just had to give it their all; he didn’t feel like he had all that much left to give, but he’d make what he had count.

***

“Beryl!” Khalid yelled, his voice carried by the wind and snow in a blizzard that kicked up only once Tethys had unleashed her tidal wave on them; the creature - he had seen her through his crystal and knew that she was not human - was engaged by South, and of all of them, while he may be the least suited to that particular duel, he had maintained the majority of his energy in getting where they were and so was the best choice for that fight. However, while she was not actively engaged with North, East, or himself, the weather she brought wouldn’t make their attempt any easier. 

Beryl - for she was still Beryl in there, regardless of her exterior and the darkness that spread through the very veins in that enormous body created for her - did not react to him, instead gliding along the icy terrain towards the south and east. He yelled her name again but still she ignored him, either purposefully or deaf to his calls - and no wonder for the latter with their size difference. He called his trident and his armor, having noticed in his earlier fight that it aided his movement rather than encumbered it, and ran for her legs, using tendrils of metal from the weapon in an attempt to bind her legs to the ground. She would notice him. 

The metal groaned and snapped as she stepped forward and he set his jaw at the challenge, running in to reinforce a second attempt as his brothers positioned themselves around her in her trajectory; he could not let her pass them, and so he aimed higher still, weaving a metallic web around her shins to bind her. She faltered, staggered in her enormous steps, and alien eyes glared down at him from on high and a bolt of plasma shot from the sky towards him. He jumped aside, though the long blue cloth sleeves on his right were singed and blackened with the proximity of the flash; she hadn’t recognized him - those eyes had been Metallia’s, not Beryl’s. But she was still in there. Khalid shook his right arm to free it from the sensation of pins and needles and redoubled his efforts to slow her down, catching in his periphery as East made another tower of stone: this one taller than the ones before, easily half the giant’s height or more as he created a stage to play his instrument; Khalid still wasn’t entirely certain what the music did, but Nero had told him before it was something along the lines of putting the darkness within the affected people to sleep, and if he could put Metallia to sleep they would have a better chance at exorcising her with North’s pagoda -- assuming he could keep her in one place and occupy her consciousness towards that goal. 

The music began to play and Metallia faltered again, the metal strands he had used on her cracking and breaking under the strain, but rather than turn her ire on him, the giantess turned towards East, pointing a finger towards him, and Khalid jumped before anything could be made of that threat. He soared through the sky, freezing air seeming to cut his face as he unsheathed his scimitar, refusing to hesitate as he slashed at her outstretched arm and exchanged the blade for the trident before he made the top of his jump, stabbing the pointed ends into the flesh of her arm before he could fall back towards the Earth. His feet barely found purchase before she hissed and jerked her arm away, and only through sending tendrils of metal into the wound saved him from being immediately ejected from her form. He thought fast and kept moving, stepping up to launch himself from the protruding weapon to land on her shoulder, shifting his weight to maintain his balance before recalling his trident to his hand, some part in the back of his mind catching the parallel between where Beryl frequently stood on him and where he was now standing. 

With his speed, he was perched even as she slapped her arm with her hand, and she snarled down at him and reached to grab him, but East’s music had not stopped, and even as she reached for him the expression of pure hatred started to recede from her eyes and he took his chance, “Beryl!” he called again, and she shook her head as though to clear it. “It’s working,” he called back down to Nero, “Keep playing for as long as you can!”

“Beryl!” he yelled again, “Wake up!”

Beyond them, behind Beryl’s Metallia form, another tower rose, this one of ice, and Khalid intended to keep any attention from it. “Beryl!”

“Kunzite?” Beryl replied in a daze, blinking twice before looking down at him with foreign red eyes, their size narrowing as she recognized him, a frown blooming across black lips. Even as she glared at him he could see Metallia returning and fading in her eyes, not fully in control but not yet relinquishing.

“It’s Khalid now, remember?” he called, part of him wondering just how far gone she was. And he realized still she did not know of his newest form, or its duties; though she often played lip service against the importance of roles and titles, he knew of her regard for them deep down and the grief that had caused her in the past, and so in bringing them forward he hoped to sway her. “Kunzite, Knight of Purity and Affection and more: the King of the West, the Lord who Sees All, _Punisher of Evil_ and Seeker of Enlightenment. Don’t make me fight you, Beryl; surrender the darkness within you and return to our side!”

 _“Seeker of Enlightenment?”_ Beryl repeated, a mocking note creeping into her tone, “Lord who Sees All? Ha!” she laughed bitterly, “We have been fooled, Kunzite. My eyes have been opened to the truth, _Enlightened_ to what was hidden from us, and I seek to punish the evil behind it. You should be returning to _my side,_ and join me in wiping the last of the duplicitous White Moon from our System forevermore!”

Behind her, North held out his hand and something started to form there, but Tethys came streaking in from one side and North had to dodge her; he spun to deal with her, but Khalid could not pay close attention, less Beryl catch on. Still East played, and while Beryl’s own fury colored her expression, the alien flashes of Metallia lessened. “Have you been enlightened, or have you been tempted into believing a facetious version of events that fit what you’d like to see? You have heard only one side of this story, how can you be so confident in declaring the truth?!”

“You have been deceived!” Beryl declared and started forward again; he lurched, reaching out to grab for balance on the horn protruding from her shoulder as she continued her march; “Once Serenity is destroyed, you, too, will be freed -”

Behind them, South launched up onto North’s tower, rammed into Tethys, and fell off the side with her, and North quickly stood and held out his hand again. Suddenly everything went quiet as a little temple appeared, shining and golden in the palm of his hand, clear to his sight despite the distance between them. Behind his head spun a wheel of green fire that became a mesmerizing whirl, and streams of darkness seemed to be drawn from Beryl’s entire form and pulled towards the center of that whirlwind like dye down a drain.

Beryl froze, unable to move forward against that pull, and the song of East’s instrument intensified, the only sound he could hear while in the vortex created by North’s spinning green flames. Beneath his feet Beryl pulsed, and more of the black wisps appeared from her form to be sucked back towards North’s glowing pagoda; Beryl yelled suddenly, cried out in pain and anguish and buckled, hugging herself tightly; he jumped, his perch suddenly gone, and grabbed what he could to remain near enough to her to hear him: her hair. As the darkness was drawn from her the strands changed brighter and brighter red, and the power that surged to stand it straight up started to fade. Not far from her ear, he spoke without shouting to East’s playing:

“You’re too smart to refute this, Beryl,” he stated, only too easily recalling all those nights they spent patiently and carefully planning their strategy to keep the ‘reborn Prince’ safe and out of the crosshairs of Diana’s Phases; she had always been so careful to consider things from all angles, to shoot down ideas that didn’t pass her careful judgement; that she had been taken spoke to Metallia’s prowess, but he felt confident she’d see the truth in this if he could line it out for her in irrefutable terms: “North’s powers are only effective against evil; if it recognizes the power within you as such, consider what that means of whatever ‘truths’ it told you,” he implored, “It found a weakness and it exploited it, changing its story to manipulate you. You aren’t the first it has taken over - did it tell you that? Each and every time it has used its host to its fullest, drained _every last drop_ before escaping its dead husk to find another! Is that how you want to be remembered, Beryl?! A woman so clever as to see the signs of destruction moments before it happened and figure out a way to escape mortality and save her people the next time around only to end up burned out after falling for a trick and betraying them?!” She shook her head and he held on tight, but even as she moved one hand from around her waist to cover the ear nearest him he kept urging, “Release Metallia, cast it off and deny it reentry, and you can change the narrative! I know you, Beryl, and I know you are more than this!”

“The White Moon Kingdom cannot be trusted!” She yelled in response, “They manipulated us! They manipulated _him!_ When they are gone he will be free, and --”

“And _what,_ Beryl?! He’d fall for you?!” he snapped, hanging on tight, taking no care to step aside her unrequited feelings for his Prince, even if he had politely ignored them before. He had felt for her - he had known the pain of wanting someone he could not have, but to this end?! “Don’t let your infatuation make you blind! If the Moon Kingdom were behind his feelings towards Serenity, they would not have moved forward with war! They would have just waited things out, squashed any resistance to the engagement, and joined Kingdoms together and usurped power under a matriarchal monarchy rather than attempt to eradicate us - _you know that!”_

She flinched, and though he could only see one quarter of her face, he could see the stubborn scowl slip for a moment, and he pushed as more and more of that sleeping darkness was pulled out of her. “Be upset about it, mourn it, but recognize the fallacies in what you’ve been told and cast out that malicious force who has manipulated you into this position so that North can seal it away! It’s not too late!”

Still doubled over in pain, she shook her head, fear in her voice as she admitted “I don’t know if I can.”

“I still believe in you,” he said.

“You can nag anyone into doing _anything,_ Beryl. This Metallia thing doesn’t stand a chance against you!” East yelled over, his addition unexpected as Khalid had not known he could hear them. Beryl’s head lowered further.

“You can eject it if you do it soon!” South shouted from somewhere below. 

“We’re here!” North shouted. 

“This isn’t your end, Beryl,” he said, “No one here wants it to be. No one _period_ wants it to be,” he corrected, feeling he knew Mamoru well enough to speak for him. “Come back to us.”

For a moment she was still but for the pulsing in her as North drained Metallia away in small rivulets of black smoke, but then, all at once, she straightened, her hands down at her sides, her chin up and her eyes closed, and she screamed. Not in pain, or anguish, but in repulsion, and he lost his grip in the suddenness of the wordless challenge. He fell and, knowing he had done everything he could and that it was all in her hands now, he let himself fall. The half-cape fluttered and slowed him, just as his full cape had, and he landed in the snow and ice of the pole, taking steps back to look up at the woman - his friend - that fought for control of her self. 

Her body pulsated again, the darkness like a cloud surrounding her, its intensity doubled compared to what it had been. East’s song picked up its tempo as Beryl continued to yell, and the shadows pouring out of her started to break, and then, suddenly, her entire form erupted in blinding black smoke. North’s vortex drew it in, and as the miasma started to thin out, Khalid ran in, holding his blue crystal to his eye and searching through that foul darkness until he found a form falling amidst it. He leapt up to meet it, carefully catching Beryl’s unconscious form and protecting it as he fell back to the ground --

 **_“NO!”_ ** a formless voice howled, **_“This is not the end!”_ **

He ran, keeping Beryl close, and turned to look behind him to find the dark cloud staring down at him with pointed empty glowing eyes, but North’s vortex continued to draw it away. It was only a matter of time: this was it, Metallia’s end --

But then flames were shooting to the sky, the brightness visible only as more and more of Metallia’s smoke cleared from before him, and Khalid’s stomach dropped: South was half-frozen near the base of North’s tower, and Tethys was making for its top. He grimaced - he had only physical weapons, and he could not fight this cloud of darkness that was Metallia with a scimitar -

 **_“Akuryo Taisan!”_ ** a voice cried out from the east, and flames tore through the air and crashed into the mass of the smoke-like presence. 

**_“Jupiter Thunderbolt!”_ **

**_“Venus Crescent Beam!”_ **

**_“Mercury Freezing Mist!”_ **

The Sailor Senshi erupted onto the scene in a rain of elemental fury, their slight forms crashing into battle with the force of a sledgehammer, and, unexpected as they were, none too soon. East’s music was fading, its volume rising sporadically as it generally quieted, Nero no doubt fighting against the exhaustion, which did not bode well for North’s predicament. He took off towards the incoming Lunar warriors, pointing with one hand towards North’s tower, but the girls were already getting into formation from where they stood on the rim of the arena -

**_“Sailor ---”_ **

He abruptly changed direction - he had heard of this attack, and if they were charging it now he had to take the other matter into his own hands. He changed direction, running straight for North’s tower, keeping Beryl as stable as possible as he ran faster than he had ever attempted before, his legs burning, and called his trident to him and spun it over his head as he darted beneath the worst of Metallia’s bulk, the pressure above him lessening with the spear’s rotation to disperse the worst of it. 

**_“Planet--”_ **

Metallia’s voice boomed all around him, its voice persistent and all-encompassing as it promised him riches and dreams and threatened him with pain and anguish in equal measure, bargaining for entrance into him that it would have another host and be saved from North’s pagoda and take its revenge, hundreds of stories trying to find purchase, looking for sympathy or empathy that he refused to listen to. Amidst the mental assault, energy bombarded him from every direction, knocking him left and right, but still he ran; in the darkness that surrounded him he thought only of making it through to aide North before Tethys could break his spell --

 **_“Attack!”_ **

He burst out of the other side of Metallia’s cloud just as the multicolored attack slammed against its mass somewhere behind him; in his hand, Beryl was still but unaffected by Metallia - or so he had to assume in her continued unconsciousness. South’s trident was outstretched still, flames shooting from them, but Tethys was far above and even as he craned his neck up the tower, he saw the green light of North’s spinning wheel start to fade.

The music stopped. 

He clenched his jaw and continued forward, jumping towards the top of North’s tower, thinking quickly to throw his trident at the ice and use it as a springboard to keep upward momentum. Behind him the smoke was pulled towards their location with such speed it sounded like a roar, the Senshi’s attack having scattered the mass and dispersed it enough for the vortex to pull it in faster. He climbed as fast as he could, the fire from below suddenly ceasing only to reappear above him. As he cleared the edge, he found North holding the pagoda but fading, his shoulders sagging, eyes closing, only to stubbornly reset his gaze, pointedly ignoring the fight around him as South fought Tethys, despite his just having been roughly 10 stories below just moments before. South was worse for wear, and while he was exhausted, he summoned his scimitar, kept Beryl close, and threw himself into the fight on adrenaline alone. 

… but then the green glow went out, and North fell onto his knees, the golden pagoda disappearing as he fell forward.

The darkness of Metallia was greatly reduced, but still some of it remained. 

**_“My liege!”_ ** Tethys shouted, appearing suddenly behind South and kicking the back of his neck, sending South sprawling. He lunged at her, slashing his sword toward her, but she flipped over him and kicked his back, and he very nearly went over the edge of the tower, catching hold of the edge at the last moment and hanging there single handedly. **_“Take this unworthy vessel --”_ **

She had barely finished speaking before the darkness surged towards her and entered her body through the mask covering her face, and Tethys immediately changed - growing larger and larger, though only a fraction of the size Beryl had been. With a cackle, Metallia turned to face him, looking over Tethy’s shoulder, **_“Your efforts are in vain, Knight. I will have my revenge; a new host has just been born.”_ **

And then she teleported away, her words hanging in the void.

A new host? He grimaced - they had to move, fast.

Khalid groaned as he pulled himself onto the ledge, careful of Beryl’s body, though she stirred and stumbled onto the icy surface when prompted so he could use both hands to pull himself up. He had to get back to Crystal Tokyo, but his friends… He moved to South and held his breath as he felt for a pulse, relieved once he felt the blood still threading through Yuu’s veins. He carefully turned him over onto his back and pulled out his blue crystal, to look across the way to East, and saw through the gem the truth that he, too, was still alive, but unconscious. 

They all three of them were. They had greatly reduced Metallia’s strength, and removed her from Beryl’s body and took from her Beryl’s sorceress powers, but she was still on the loose, and in the body of a monster, and so at unknown strength and danger to those in Crystal Tokyo. 

They couldn’t leave it like this. Uselessly, he shook Yuu as though he could wake him, quietly voicing his despair, _“We can’t stay here. We have to get to Crystal Tokyo - you have to get us back there. We must finish this--”_

Two Sailor Senshi appeared, landing carefully on the tower: Mars and Venus. “Mercury and Jupiter are checking on the King of the East,” their leader reported, and while he needed to keep moving, and had to return to Crystal Tokyo to stop Metallia, he was starting to see double. He closed his eyes tightly against it and concentrated, moving to shakily stand. 

“He exhausted his energy putting and keeping Metallia asleep,” he replied, moving to kneel - or, fall gracefully - to Kaito’s side to gently turn him over. “North sealed most of it away, but it still escaped in that remaining general.” He knew their goal; seeing them here could mean that Usagi was safe and had sent them to help, but he could not count for their continued aid if her safety was still in question. “It will be on its way to Crystal Tokyo. Did you find your Serenity?” 

“No,” Venus replied evenly, their presence there more a mystery, “but we found this time’s Endymion, asleep encased in gold quartz, same as Queen Serenity had been in Elysion.” 

“I can’t believe…” a small voice tentatively cried: Beryl on her knees, her features gradually returning to what they used to be. Her hair, while still red, was darkening, the horns on her shoulders and wrists were shrinking, the fangs in her mouth disappearing, her ears were rounding, but still she wore the foreign tight-fitting dress as opposed to the knee-length, A-line dress she used to wear. She wiped tears from her eyes, looking away from them as though disliking she had said anything aloud, and while he could not afford the distraction, he could not cut her off. She cleared her throat, “I’m ashamed of my weakness; it was so convincing, presented so logically… It was so easy to believe it, but I… I should have fought more, before it was too late --”

The two senshi turned from him to face the fairy, her wings slowly starting to reform, and Venus looked to Mars and Mars approached her and knelt down. Beryl glared up at her, but Mars offered her hand and said with grace and empathy, “We’ve been there.” 

“All you can do is to take better care be more aware in the future,” Venus said, not unkindly, though the shift between who she was now and who she had been in the previous age was stark, and he wanted to talk to her, for her to talk to him as they had once done… but now was not the time. They had no time.

“Whatever it is you intend to do now,” he asked, unsure of how long he could hold out, despite his best intentions. He forced himself to stand, stumbling and catching himself without trending on Kaito. “Please, take me to Crystal Tokyo; I can’t let --” the blood rushed from his head --

Venus caught him and maneuvered to support him, her hand around his waist, his arm around her shoulder, and even though they were that close she looked only to Beryl - “Do you know where she is? Our Serenity?”

Beryl, who had tentatively moved to Mars’s hand, made a motion that he could somehow still make out: she nodded, but whatever she said was muddled in his mind as his vision spun and his body finally gave out. 


	12. Emergency Tactics

**Chapter 12: Emergency Tactics**

King Endymion couldn’t provide exact play-by-plays. His narration was matter-of-fact and sporadic, and Mamoru did not attempt to interrupt or offer explanations less he distract him. It was agonizing, knowing what was going on and being helpless to affect it. His friends were fighting Beryl, and Metallia, and he… he wanted them to be safe, to survive; he wanted them to defeat Metallia, but he wanted them to save Beryl, too; even if it had proven impossible for him, he wanted them to be able to reach her and pull her back from the edge before it was too late. 

“They split up. Jadeite’s fighting Tethys, the other three are heading for Metallia.” Tethys was water-based; anyone else might have been better for that fight; what did they have planned? “Nephrite and Zoisite are going around her; Kunzite has approached. Metallia’s stopped.” Endymion paused, his eyes narrowing in confusion, and said as though questioning it, “Metallia’s being dampened? Kunzite isn’t touching the ground anymore. Tethys isn’t, either - she’s disappearing and reappearing, but that’s normal; Jadite’s following. She’s collided with Zoisite, but Jadeite’s there. He’s taking her away from Zoisite. Nephrite isn’t moving; Zoisite is ---”

He cut off mid-sentence, and Mamoru felt like he was in freefall. North was what? Why wasn’t West on the ground anymore? What was East doing?

“Metallia’s power is lessening.”

Mamoru’s leg stopped shaking. He looked up from clenched hands to the face of his future self, and saw disbelief there - disbelief masking surprise, and hope. 

“They’re draining her somehow?!” Endymion turned to him for answers, and while the news was just as surprising to him, he quickly thought through --

“Their items! North and East have new items that can affect evil; they used them to help get people back to the palace when we went looking for Beryl. They must have found a way to use them against Metallia,” Mamoru conjectured, and though his nerves were taught with anxiety, he started to feel hopeful. “North has a pagoda that draws out and locks away evil, and East has a lute that does… something, we weren’t sure what - ”

“Something’s happening - it’s erratic - it’s --” Endymion cut off, brows furrowing, “Metallia’s gone? No - still there, just… diffuse? Kunzite’s touching ground - gone again, now back. The diffusion is being drawn still; it's getting weaker. The senshi have engaged it. Jadeite’s unmoving, near Zoisite. Tethys is gone again. Kunzite’s running through Metallia towards them. Nephrite’s energy’s almost out. The Senshi have released a massive attack -” he paused, Mamoru’s breath held. “I can’t tell if they did it. It’s too diffuse -- Zoisite’s been attacked. Jadeite’s dis--no, he’s with him. Kunzite’s there. Nephrite’s down. Zoisite’s down.” Endymion swallowed, the excitement suddenly gone from him as he continued his report, and Mamoru’s hope sank with it, swallowed by fear for what the King meant by ‘down’. “Jadeite’s down. Metallia has stabilized. Still diffuse, but no longer losing strength. The senshi are splitting - Tethys is -”

Endymion sucked in a breath, eyes shooting open, a whispered name escaping his lips -  _ “Serenity-” _ that ran shivers down Mamoru’s spine with its intensity and the anguish behind it - what happened?! But the King swallowed, closed his eyes, and directed himself back to the fight despite whatever was going on in Crystal Tokyo -- but his tone went from afraid to defeated: “Tethys has given herself to Metallia. She’s disappeared.”

“Serenity?” he asked.

The King cleared his throat. “Our daughter is born.”

“The Kings?”

“Alive,” Endymion replied with a far off look. “Unconscious. Kunzite’s down.”

He stood. “Metallia -?!”

“Heading for Crystal Tokyo,” Endymion confirmed.

The words hung in the air between them like a death sentence. Nothing and everything had changed: Metallia was still coming for Crystal Tokyo, only now Crystal Tokyo stood undefended. It was as though they had never come: Metallia had found a host from this era and headed back towards Crystal Tokyo yet again with only Queen Serenity at its defense, only this time she couldn’t possibly be ready and able to defend it. … but the Kings and Senshi had weakened it. Beryl was no longer its host. His body was still there. “Metallia using Tethys - what do you think that does for it?” he quickly asked; if Metallia had been able to use Tethys the entire time, why hadn’t it in the past?

“Tethys isn’t human, and being affiliated with water doesn’t lend itself well for Metallia’s plasma-based solar attacks; she shouldn’t be a good long-term fit, but if Metallia is going in for a final blast, that may not matter. Tethys will most certainly be destroyed, as the rest of Metallia’s generals have been, but while acting now will obliterate the last of the strongest of its forces, delaying would give us time to recover. Knowing now what your Kings can do, it knows it can’t afford that.”

“If we can take it out before it delivers this next blow, Tethys will be gone and Metallia will be out of hosts?”

“Hypothetically,” the King replied hollowly, “but there are none there to deliver that blow or defend against one. ... Serenity, our children…”

“Release me. Send me back to Elysion -”

“Earth’s energy is still wrapped up in protecting those lifeforms I have linked to it; your body may be able to stand at this rate but not… much…” he trailed off, his brows furrowing, eyes downcast, “if you are considering making those sacrifices I mentioned before, I--”

Mamoru cut him off before he could finish that thought - “Send me back to Elysion and I’ll at least be able to warn Helios and put Crystal Tokyo on alert. He doesn’t know about your being here - knowing you’re not in danger of being taken over means he could redirect his efforts. With him and the Helios from my time still in play, there’s more that could be done before it comes to that, I’m sure of it.” He moved to stand before his future self and knelt down ahead of him, “Let me try. Don’t make those sacrifices just yet - not when there’s still a chance.”

Endymion looked at him with a heavy gaze, but then nodded and a shimmer grew in the space beside him. “Do what you can; if you are needed, once you wake, draw for power from Earth and I --.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Mamoru stood and bowed, appreciative that, for a time, those decisions Endymion faced were not his to bear. In the past he sacrificed everything - and everyone - to have a future with the person he loved when she had offered her life for his, and now in this future Endymion faced the decision to sacrifice unknown strangers for a chance at saving his loved ones, even though there was no guarantee Mamoru would be able to win even with all that power. In his time, his friends had risked their lives to get him to where he needed to be, and less than a week later he gave his life to save everyone, but that can’t be the only way to win these fights.

Not this one, at least. His friends had already put in the hard work in stripping Metallia from Beryl; he just had to figure out how to knock it out before it could knock Crystal Tokyo out. All of Earth’s energy was wrapped up in keeping its population alive, but Earth still needed protection. He needed more power, more energy to use towards its protection, and he knew where he wanted to start to find that energy.

He strode quickly through the shimmer in the air beside the man he might have become one day and found himself back in Elysion, in the beautiful twilight gardens filled with fireflies and the smell of roses. “Helios!” he called, striding towards the gazebo by the lake where he had met the high priest before. As he walked, his Golden Kingdom armor fell about him, as though sensing his intentions, and so as he stepped up the short wooden stairs it was with a familiar weight around his shoulders and metallic clicks of his armor against itself. He found the High Priest sitting on a bench within the gazebo, sleeping peacefully; he gently shook him awake, and the garnet eyes opened with a flash -

“En---dymion?” He asked, standing. 

Mamoru concentrated, and his Princely attire faded away to his new Cardinal King uniform, the one gifted him by Taishakuten that reflected his position as one beside the Kings in the defense of Earth, as his own Helios’s words came back to him in the effects of his Prince armor in this life: it drew energy directly from Earth through the Golden Crystal without a barrier, and he could not afford to do that. With his transformation as the King of the Cardinal Rose, there should be safeguards in place - he would have to concentrate to access more power, giving him more control, which was crucial in this situation. 

Helios shifted, recognizing him as the younger, and the Priest started to deflect - “Your body isn’t ready for--”

Mamoru cut him off with a deluge of information: everything that he had learned from King Endymion, starting with what had happened to the King, what he was doing, and “where” he was, and ending with what had just happened at the Pole and what was coming for Crystal Tokyo.

The Priest listened carefully, his demeanor changing immediately upon realizing what he was being told, and his brows furrowed with thought as more and more information was given to him. When Mamoru finished, he nodded, “The Queen has just given birth; the girl is healthy but Serenity needs rest, she should not be using the crystal now, but… if Endymion is safe, then perhaps I…” he trailed off thoughtfully, but while Mamoru wanted him to pursue that chain of thought - they needed as much help as they could get, and he did not know Helios’s power source; if it could still help them, that may be the extra help they needed - he pressed him to continue thinking aloud. 

“Can you draw energy from your power gem to help fend off this attack?”

“It… perhaps?” Helios replied, shaking his head, “I reseated my power to here, in Elysion, long ago; the Sunstone was collecting spiritual energy and funneling it back into Earth for the Golden Crystal to use, but now that dreams are intimately connected to this place, there’s a chance I could use that dream energy as a power source and bolster my own power sources before reseating it; it may cause some discomfort to the dreamers, but I may be able to generate a shield around the Crystal Palace with it, though I don’t know how powerful the shield could be. If the blast Metallia creates is anything like the last, I doubt it would be enough.”

Mamoru nodded, thinking. “Something is better than nothing, and she has been weakened.”

Priest Helios nodded, agreeing. “I can start the process here and then manifest back at the crystal palace --” The Priest faltered, and Mamoru reached out to support him before he could fall, wondering at the effect --

_ “Mamoru!” _ Helios  _ \- his  _ Helios, the unisus - appeared overhead,  _ “You’re --” _ he cleared his throat, changing his tone to official and reported,  _ “Forgive my interference here, but the alarms are sounding. Metallia has appeared north of the city. It is coming.” _

Priest Helios nodded and his Helios blinked back out Elysion, and the Priest immediately regained himself, standing straight and putting up a hand to show he was fine. It must have been the interference between their soul stones, which meant his friend could not be in the same place as this version of his future self’s physical body. “We don’t have much time,” Helios stated, and walked around him to leave the gazebo. He raised one arm and fireflies rose to spiral around it, the glow growing as the hundreds of the insects gathered and flew. 

“Tell me more about the Guardian of the Sun,” Mamoru called as he followed, stepping down into the garden right after him. Helios turned his head towards him as though he couldn’t believe what he asked, but he pressed. “Endymion is using Earth’s energy - nearly  _ all of it - _ to keep everything safe from the Solar Storms; there’s nothing left to be used in its protection. You said that the Sun provided additional protection. Now would be a good time to draw from that.”

“It’s -- it doesn’t work like that,” Helios replied, and from far afield two women ran towards them, their white dresses and long hair streaming out behind them. “The Sun’s protection is passive - it’s symbolic, it provides this planet with the ability to continue on, like you are able to when drawing in more energy than you should --”

“If we could turn it from passive to active we would have a better chance at surviving Metallia’s attack. Tell me what you can and wake me up so I can help.”

The women reached them - their forms willowy and ethereal in a way that made Mamoru wonder if they were real, his eyes immediately drawn to the circular buns in their hair that looked like -- he swallowed against the tightness in his chest, tried to focus on Helios and what he had to solve first before he could -- _ she wasn’t on Earth  _ \-- face that… that. His hands clenched into fists at his side and he implored Helios to do as he asked and let him start moving again. The women fell into kneeling positions, their hands clasped beneath their chins, and they began to shine with inner light as they prayed. Some voice from his past recognized and named them: Maenads, magical priestesses devoting themselves to Earth and its temples, guarding and defending them under Helios’s direction and guidance.

The Priest regarded him, frowning with concentration, and for a moment Mamoru thought his request would be ignored, but then Helios quickly grabbed his wrist and jerked him forward again in that familiar stomach-flipping, falling sensation from before, but as he passed him by this time, rather than wish him luck he said in a flat tone, “His name was Sol-Apollo.” 

Sol-Apollo… the Greco-roman god of the sun? But they didn’t… they hadn’t really existed, had they? But then Rin had called to  _ Chronos, the god of time _ and the time key had opened a portal to the space-time dimension. He had even said Pluto was the time god’s daughter, and she existed, so… ...even so, how could he hope to access the Sun’s power through knowing that name alone?

The moment he opened his eyes he knew it would hurt to move, but he felt the tremors as something enormous and powerful approached and knew, too, that he didn’t have time to waste. Helios appeared beside his bed, the unisus growing to full height as he quickly reported,  _ “Metallia is not in Beryl anymore, but another; they approach from the north. The Princess is born but the Queen is weakened from the process; if you heal her, she may be able to fight it.” _

He --- of  _ course?! _ He nodded and carefully sat up, and immediately Helios wedged his nose beneath his arm and instructed him to hold on, and in a sickening, gut-wrenching sensation, they were suddenly in a large bedroom, surrounded by people. He put his feet down to catch himself, but still held tight to Helios for balance and to better check his own reserves as he evaluated whether this was something he could do without pulling so much energy that Endymion would make those choices he’d rather they avoided. A baby was crying somewhere, and Serenity…  _ Serenity. _ Older, tired, still stunningly beautiful Serenity was staring at him from where she lay propped up on pillows in a king-sized bed and his heart jerked and cracked in his chest, unable to stop thoughts of Usako - missing, maybe hurt - from crashing in. Her eyes were on him, focused in a way that made it seem as though she saw in him a ghost, and tears gathered in her eyes in the way he struggled not to let them do in his. “Mamoru,” she greeted, and he bowed his head to her, grasping at peace where he could find it. 

“Your Majesty,” he greeted, furthering the space between them, and as tremors passed beneath his feet he pushed forward, giving her the news he would do anything to hear back about the person he was without, “King Endymion is alive. He is stable, but he is in stasis and he is unable to free himself,” and then he pushed forward with Helios’s plan, “Earth’s powers are tied up in what he is doing, so my ability to help is compromised. We have a back-up plan, but it comes at a steep cost. However, that can all be avoided; if I can heal you with what I have left, could you use the Silver Crystal to fight Metallia? She is weaker than--”

Thunder boomed ominously, so loud it shook the very air in his lungs, and when finally it ended, the sound louder than the impact tremors of the monster’s steps, the room erupted into activity.  _ “Seal the palace grounds!” “Prepare the people!” _ Mamoru looked up, his eyes catching the Queen’s in the split second before she raised her voice and the room froze, awaiting her command and quickly following it: “Go, and take our children to the Chamber of Prayer: it has the strongest foundation, but let me see her first.”

A woman swooped in carrying the crying child and Helios stepped them out the way to give her room to reach the Queen comfortably, and Serenity reached tenderly for the infant, cradling her quickly and pressing her lips to the tiny forehead with the whisps of dark pink hair, and said so quietly he almost couldn’t hear “You are loved, and when all this is over we will give you the best name in the world, I promise.” She kissed her forehead again and as she offered the child to the waiting handmaiden, he swallowed against the sudden and terrible realization of just what they were asking her to do. If things didn’t go their way… Rin had called him here so this very thing wouldn’t happen, and in the end, he had been completely useless in avoiding this. What if Serenity… but his friends had weakened Metallia, and maybe that had been enough? Regardless of how much she had taken from him, what they did had to have been enough, right?

The handmaiden held the swaddled infant close to her chest as she rushed from the room. “Get me the Crystal,” Serenity called and she reached out for him. If he did this… whatever happened to her was completely on him, but what choice did they have? She sensed his hesitation and wiggled her fingers at him in playful impatience, offering him a smile so familiar it ached, “It’ll be alright. I can do it, and nothing bad is going to happen; I’ll fight to --”

“The Silver Crystal is missing!” a breathless voice shouted, and the room froze as Serenity’s head snapped to look opposite Mamoru, and he followed her gaze to an alcove across the room where two pillowed pedestals stood and a footman stared in shock back at them, his hands as empty as either pillow. The Silver Crystal was…?

Serenity, her hand still reaching out for him, carefully reached for her neck, as though to check for a necklace that wasn’t there, and pale blue eyes looked back at him in confusion. Where was it?

The double doors to the bedroom shot open and a footman burst in, breathless - “We can’t find Little Lord!”

Thunder exploded yet again, emphasizing the ominous announcement and paralyzing them in place. The lights flickered and died, pitching them into semi-darkness as the last light of the setting sun failed to illuminate the room around them. Still, the first thing he saw were those eyes staring at him in equal determination and fear; they both knew what happened: what Rin did, what he was planning now.  _ Who those lightning strikes must have been fired at. _

“Heal me,” the Queen fearfully commanded, her voice wavering as she threw off the covers and reached for him, but, beside him Helios staggered and Mamoru, still leaning on him for support, fell back with him. He checked himself before he could inadvertently heal himself with what little power his Golden Crystal had gathered, and Helios managed to stabilize them before they could fall, but he choked out -

_ “Priest Helios has returned from Elysion and is attempting to put up a barrier, but my being here is conflicting with his magic! I need to leave!” _

“Go!” he urged, and fell to his knees to free him up. Helios looked at him as though he wanted to say something, but with another call of “go,” he winked out of existence. 

The Queen, unsteady on her feet, had one hand guiding her steps as the other reached out for him and he reached back, but then she stopped and gasped sharply, face tilted upward, and suddenly she was on her knees before him, clasping his hand in both of her hers, staring at him intently as she spoke urgently, “It’s working for him - it’s pulling from the Moon and me and  _ him,  _ but he doesn’t know how to use it. If it stops he’ll be defenseless, but if he uses it to its fullest  _ it will kill him, _ ” she said, her grip on his hands tight, the connection feeding her emotions into him so that the fear he had for Rin was suddenly so much deeper and sharper and distinct. “I need to help him, but I can’t use the crystal in his place anymore - any pause in its power could give Metallia the edge it needs to overwhelm him. I will channel the Moon in his place , but  _ you need to help him control it. _ Endymion has always been able to help me in keeping its power in check - you  _ must do the same for him,  _ otherwise --” her voice cut off with emotion as tears filled her eyes and he didn’t need empathy to feel what she felt. She swallowed past it, blinked and did nothing for the tears that tracked down either cheek, “Promise me.”

He nodded his head, but the grip she had on his hands tightened further and she said again through clenched teeth,  _ “Promise me!” _

“I promise,” he vowed, and the Queen nodded sharply, fresh tears falling as she raised herself taller on her knees and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead and stood.

“Take me to the Chamber of Prayer,” she called, and immediately a handmaid and footman rushed to her side, the later bowing before sweeping her off her feet and carrying her from the room, the former moving to catch the door before them.

Alone and afraid for the little boy who had come so far and faced so much to ask him for help, Mamoru reached into his Golden Crystal and unleashed the energy stored there to restore his strength, transforming into his black uniform in the process. Though he still felt nowhere near steady, he was able to walk, which meant he could run with middling success. So he ran. But it was dark, and once he left the royal bedchambers he realized he had no idea where he was, or where he was to go, and without electricity how could he hope to get up to where Rin was? He stopped before he could run into anything, his hand held out to touch the wall to steady himself, and caught his breath. He had to think this through. He needed to get to the elevator, but without power it would be useless. He had to find the stairs, then, but he didn’t have enough energy to get him to the top in time to be helpful to Rin. If he could tap into the sun’s power… but he had no idea how to do that and didn’t have the time to figure that out right now. If Helios could just teleport him up there that’d solve it, but he was who-knew-where now. He slammed his fist on the wall in helplessness and tried anyway, yelling Helios’s name in his mind as loud as he could, thinking in that particular manner that Helios was sometimes somehow able to pick up even when he wasn’t saying anything out loud, going so far as put just a whisper of power into the call --

And, miraculously, through a game of telephone with Priest Helios and the Maenads, his Helios reappeared in front of him just long enough for him to grab on and let go again as he found himself on top of the tallest tower of the Crystal Palace, staring down a horrifying giant of a humanoid creature with a charged glowing staff - the same staff Beryl had held upon becoming Queen Beryl, the staff with the bauble on its end that mirrored the bulbous rock formation in that chamber back on Metallia’s asteroid. 

And then there was Rin.


	13. Carry On

**Chapter 13: (Give Me the Strength to) Carry On**

He’d always wanted someone to protect.

Ever since he was little, he practiced hard at being a good prince and a gentleman. He had the best teachers in the world, and while he would sometimes annoy them (on purpose), he wanted them to be proud of him. He paid attention, he thought things through, he did his best and kept his goal in mind: he wanted to be like Papa and be someone who could protect people, but he didn’t have someone to protect. Papa protected Mama, and the Knights protected Papa, and Papa and the Knights protected the world. He wanted to be strong and reliable and smart, but there was no one for him to protect. … but then his Mama and Papa said he was going to have a baby sister, and he knew  _ she _ was the one he was going to protect. He’d grow up strong and smart and reliable and protect her from  _ anything _ that threatened her and be the best Knight in the world! He studied harder with Jadeite and paid even better attention to Kunzite’s sword fighting lessons and… well he kept sneaking out of Zoisite’s lectures but he felt like he already knew what he was talking about and it made his Mama laugh and it was a challenge to try to find a hiding place where Zoisite couldn’t find him, even though he always did. 

Priest Helios was strict with decorum and etiquette and sometimes he forgot, but he was pretty good at apologizing and making up for his mistakes and trying really hard not to make them again, so Priest Helios - while sometimes intimidating - wasn’t nearly as scary as he could be, and he always seemed really calm and put-together and he knew that if he could impress Priest Helios, he was being good. He knew he could do it, and he knew that when his baby sister needed him, he would be there for her and save the day! He’d be ready to protect her, no matter what.

But then…  _ it _ came, and suddenly... the Knights weren’t enough. As tough and strong as they were, they weren’t enough, because  _ it came back. _ So Papa went with them to face it, and he… and Papa didn’t come back. And Helios left and came back as a ghost and couldn’t help protect anyone, and the Knights were trying but they weren’t able to protect the city, which meant no one was protecting Mama. But then they awakened the Senshi and  _ they _ protected Mama, but… then the Knights fell. And then the Senshi fell. And then  _ no one _ was protecting her. 

So he would. He wasn’t ready. He couldn’t do magic, he wasn’t big or strong, but he promised he’d try and he tried… but he couldn’t do it. Mama had to protect him instead, him and everybody else, and she  _ didn’t _ fall, but she… and his sister… . He wasn’t strong enough, but he was still fast, and he was still smart, and he knew he could  _ find _ people who could protect her. If he changed the past, the Senshi could be stronger, and they could protect her and then she would be safe and maybe none of this would have happened, so he broke the rules. He went to the past, he escaped its monsters, he found his… he found Mamoru and the “Heavenly Kings” and even though he  _ knew _ something was wrong, that he messed up somewhere when the Crystal Star Points came into it, he still thought… when Usagi-chan transformed into a Senshi, and the Senshi awakened, he still thought he had done well. That he had still done what he thought would help: he awakened the Senshi so they’d be stronger in his time and he’d return and everything would be back to normal. His Mama would be safe, and the Knights would be awake, and his Papa would be home.

But it didn’t work that way. But even though he failed, Mamoru and they were going to help. He had been scared to come back, but if they were going to protect his Mama, then it would still be alright.  _ Priest Helios had said he did well. _ He thought… he thought that everything would be alright, and they would save the day. 

But he was wrong. 

They had fallen, or disappeared. 

And now his sister was here. 

They had sent him out of the room - him and Gaea - when the baby was coming. Helios stayed with him and told him everything would be alright, but he knew that wasn’t true. They were alone here. Usagi-chan’s Senshi and the Heavenly Kings were gone, Mamoru was… was like the Knights and his Mama’s senshi. That Queen Beryl person scared him so much he was cold all over just thinking about her and those horns and her fangs and the way she  _ looked at him. _ And she was  _ coming here. _ Helios had tried to get him to walk away when his Mama started screaming, but he couldn’t leave her. He was all she had. Helios told him to cover his ears and he did… but he could still hear her. And then she stopped, and the baby started crying. She was here. His baby sister was here. And something terrifying was coming for them.

He had to protect her. 

So when someone opened the door to tell Priest Helios that she was healthy and that his Mama was fine and resting and opened wider for Helios to go in, he followed, but he didn’t go to the bed to see them. He snuck over to the pink-pillowed pedestal in the alcove where Mama’s crystal rested, and while everyone else was paying attention to Mama and his sister, he stole it, and shushed Gaea before he could say anything, and snuck back out of the room. 

Mama had used the Silver Crystal to protect him before, but she had been so weak and tired afterward that everyone had been worried about her and the baby and now she was even more tired. He didn’t know if he could use the Crystal, but he had to try: he wasn’t very strong yet. He couldn’t fight adults with a sword, he hadn’t found his own magic, and while he could be as smart as anybody, being smart alone wasn’t going to make sure Queen Beryl didn’t hurt his family. With the Silver Crystal, he could protect them. He had to. He was all that was left. He ran for the elevators and as someone left it, he ran in and pressed up and closed the door, ignoring their questions. 

Gaea followed him, and panted, catching his breath as the floor rose. “What are you going to do, Little Lord?”

“I’m going to protect them.”

“With the Crystal?”

He nodded, looking up at the numbers above the door, seeing as the old-fashioned golden needle rose to point at bigger and bigger numbers.

“You haven’t tried to use it before, are you sure it will work for you?”

He watched as the speed slowed down, the needle pointing flat to the right, and swallowed against the truth. He didn’t know. 

“Little Lord?” Gaea quietly prompted. 

The elevator bell tinkled and the door opened into the observation lounge - a pretty room at the top of the tallest tower, with pastel furniture and plants and a ‘bar’ and windows all around - windows of crystal, looking out in every direction. It was one of his favorite rooms and his Mama and Papa would sometimes hold parties up here and everyone always had fun and talked about how pretty it was, only now… now the windows weren’t see-through. They were covered in black soot, and some of them were cracked and warped from when his mother fought it the last time, all alone on the roof. The city wasn’t very pretty from here anymore, all blasted and burned and empty, and the sun was going down so it would be dark soon, and there was a big, black storm coming in from the north that made his legs start to shake, but he swallowed past his fear and followed in his mother’s footsteps towards the stairs leading up and out. 

Gaea kept at his heels, staring up at him with big green eyes, looking just as scared as he felt. He’d… he’d protect him, too. 

He cleared his throat, pausing before opening the door to the secret stairs he wasn’t supposed to know about, and said as bravely as he could, “The Silver Crystal follows your heart and performs miracles so long as you believe it can. It has to work.”

There was no door at the top of the stairs; it was just gone, melted away, and he swallowed as he stepped out into the sunset, looking around for a place to make his stand. He had seen her from the videos: he knew how she had held her arms out, he knew how she planted her feet and that she talked to the crystal before she used it, but he couldn’t remember what she had said, his heart had been beating so loud when it happened. He found where she stood because it looked like there had been a flood all around it. He slipped as he tried to climb up the wavy, melted crystal, but he caught himself with his knees, keeping the crystal cradled to his chest with both hands. If he dropped it, there would be no hope at all. Gaea jumped up on top of the flat surface and as he reached up to pull himself up, Gaea licked the back of his hand with his scratchy little tongue. He looked up to find the kitten at his eye-level for a moment. 

“Little Lord…” Gaea said, and he carefully flattened his hand to pull himself up, keeping the crystal close to his chest. He knelt beside Gaea and pet his fur, trying to be brave, but the sun was going down and Gaea’s fur was starting to stand on end from the static of the storm and he just wanted to run inside and hide, but he couldn’t do that. 

So instead he said, “It’ll be okay, Gaea,” just like Priest Helios had told him earlier, and scratched him under his chin, “but you should go inside, okay? I don’t want you to blow away.”

Gaea looked up at him, nodded, and rubbed his body against his socks once before jumping back to the stairwell, but instead of running downstairs and finding someplace to hide, he just ducked down inside the opening behind the first step, looking small but staying close, and that made him want to cry. He wasn’t going to leave him alone, even now. He sniffed, wiped his eyes, and planted his feet so he faced north, trying to stand in the middle of the little v-pattern his mother’s powers had made when fighting against the monster before. 

But once his feet were planted and Gaea was inside, there wasn’t anything left to do but look, even though he really, really didn’t want to. He was afraid of her. He was afraid of the way she acted, and the way she looked, and the way she looked at him. He didn’t want to face her. He wanted his Papa, or Mamoru, or the Knights or the Kings or  _ anybody _ to come and help him, but there was no one. And if he didn’t face her, she would make his Mama disappear just like his Papa had, and his baby sister, too. He swallowed hard and he held the crystal out in one hand and put his other hand up like Mama had and opened his palm -- The crystal fell and he jumped to chase after it before it could go over the edge and slide off the side and a sob caught in his throat but he wouldn’t let it go, just like he wouldn’t let the crystal go. He had it pinned, and he carefully wrapped his hands around it, wishing his palms were even just a little bit bigger, but they weren’t. He wasn’t big. Not yet. But he could do this - he had to do this. 

He tried again, standing with his feet planted, and this time he didn’t pretend he could make it float like she could. He kept it gripped tightly in his left hand, but held it out, keeping his eyes only on his fists and the little glint off the crystal of the sunset’s light, and then peeked out at the storm ahead of them. He could see a shape in it - enormously tall and skinny, lit from behind with bolts of blue lightning against the black, black clouds, and it looked like a skeleton marching towards him and the sob escaped his throat like a whimper and he couldn’t take it back. He looked back at the Silver Crystal and took deep breaths to try to calm down, just like his parents had taught him, and he tried to speak to it. 

“Illusionary Silver Crystal!” he called, using his best, bravest voice, “heed my call! Protect them from the evil Queen!”

He held his breath, but nothing happened. The skeleton was getting closer, its footsteps resounding in the ground beneath his feet, and he tried again - “Silver Crystal! On behalf of my mother, Neo-Queen Serenity, unleash your power and protect this castle!” 

Nothing happened. 

**_“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Little Red?”_ ** an enormous voice boomed, and in a flash of lighting he saw the flesh of the giant monster illuminated from the front, and while it wasn’t the scary Queen Beryl, it was somehow worse; she wasn’t all there. She wore a mask -- the mask one of the generals wore -- but a chunk was missing, and beneath he could see a flash of blue skin around a pale, naked jawbone. The body was covered but decaying, more and more of the skeleton showing even from the front as she marched forward, and its long, straight hair whipping in the wind of the storm it brought with it.  **_“All alone, Little Red?”_ ** it called, and then cackled, its laughter making chills race up and down his spine. It pointed a finger towards him and lightning shot out of her bony fingers to strike the tower right beside him, and he yelled and jumped but kept hold of the crystal. 

“Little Lord!!” Gaea cried out in fear. 

He was shaking, but he couldn’t run away. He had to protect them. “Silver Crystal, please!” he called, holding the gem out again, “Please, help me! Help me protect them! Help me fight her!” 

The monster cackled again and raised its hand and he held his breath in fear, trying to concentrate on the crystal even though he was watching the monster’s finger and the giant staff in its hand that it held above its head. Thunder cracked and he shook and lightning lanced towards him, but it was scattered by a wall of iridescence just in front of the castle, and he sucked in his breath in a hiccup he was so surprised. Had the crystal worked? He looked at it, but it wasn’t lit up, it didn’t shine, and it wasn’t floating, so he didn’t think… but then the wall, where did it come from?

The monster scowled and sent another blast at him, but this one, too, crashed and scattered against the barrier instead of hitting him, the light from the blast dazzling in the darkness following the sunset.  **_“Your barrier will not hold, Priest,”_ ** the monster threatened, its hand taking hold of the staff to bring it forward, lowering it against them. Hiccuping, he held the crystal back out, thinking fast. High Priest Helios must have come up with something, but in the light of the second crash he had seen holes form and reforge; maybe Helios could hold it, but if he couldn’t and if he ran away, he couldn’t protect them. He still had to try to help.

“Silver Crystal!” he hiccuped, “Please! Just this once, help me! Fight this evil! In the name of the Moon!!”

The crystal shone and then grew hot. He jumped, his eyes wide, and he bit his lip as he carefully opened his palm to look at the crystal, and, sure enough, it was glowing. Still hiccuping, he continued to plead with it, “Please protect everyone! Please destroy the monster so it can’t hurt anyone anymore!” It glowed brighter and rose from his hand and, in fear of losing it, he put his other hand on top of it, trapping it between them, and he wondered if that’s what his mother was doing in holding it that way. He tried it, and it stayed, floating suspended in the air between his hands, and as he marveled at it he realized his hiccups had stopped. He swallowed, looked past the crystal to the monster, whose own staff was starting to glow, and outstretched his arms towards it again as though to point the way for the power to go. 

And it went. In a great, bright white burst of power, the crystal’s energy surged forward like a lance away from him, shining brightly as it burst towards the skeleton monster.

And it hurt. 

It was hot and it felt like he was hanging suspended off of his hands, his arms suddenly tired and heavy and while it was so hard to keep them straight he fought to keep it up as the monster was struck by the light and opened its mouth wide, its jawbone hanging beneath the mask, and screamed at him. He shook, but kept his hands steady, “Please fight it! Please defeat it!” he strained to yell, trying with all his might to keep the beam of light pointed out at the monster. It was hitting her, but she staggered only a little before lightning shot off of her, pushing the light back as both hands returned to her staff and pointed it again, gathering energy to return fire, and he just kept wishing and praying and pleading with it to keep going --

“You’re doing great, Rin,” a voice encouraged from beside him and he snapped his head up to see Mamoru moving to kneel beside him. Tears were rolling down his cheeks and his arms were shaking, but Mamoru didn’t seem to notice as he put one hand on his far shoulder and moved to shadow his left hand in how it held the crystal. “You’ve got this, let me help just a little bit,” he said, looking at the monster, so Rin did, too, and as more and more energy flowed out of his hands it suddenly wasn’t so hard to hold the Silver Crystal anymore, and his chest didn’t burn so bad, and the power flowing out of it seemed more purposeful. He swallowed and tried to help more. “Believe in yourself and concentrate on pushing the power out of the crystal and towards the monster, alright?” Cardinal King instructed, and Rin tried to follow those instructions, pushing the light out towards the giant skeleton that had destroyed his city, stolen his Papa, taken his Knights, defeated his mother’s senshi, and threatened both his Mama and his baby sister. He was doing it: he was protecting them. He loved them and he could finally do something about the monster that was hurting them. He could do this. And he wasn’t alone: he had Gaea, and Mamoru, and Priest Helios, and that feeling in his chest: the gentle warm feeling, rather than the burning hot tearing feeling; he didn’t know how or why or if it was just wishing it to be true, but it felt like Mama. And with all of them with him, he knew he could do it: he could fight this evil and protect everyone! Jadeite and Nephrite and Kunzite and Zoisite, his mother’s senshi, Gaea, Mama and his sister - he wouldn’t stand by anymore! He lost Luna, but he wasn’t going to lose anyone else ever again! The light was brighter, the beam bigger, and as it slammed into Metallia she recoiled, throwing up a shield of her own at the last moment, but still he knew that it was working.

“There. Keep it just like that, ok?” Mamoru instructed, and he nodded. He could do this. Cardinal King let go and the power fluctuated for a minute, but he concentrated on pushing the energy forward like he’d been told, and it righted itself. He could do this. 

The skeleton screamed, and in that scream, it released energy from its staff, energy that smashed up against the bright light of the silver crystal and burst backward, and suddenly the crystal was fighting him again. He gasped in surprise, and Mamoru’s hands were back in place, keeping his arms straight, helping him guide the Crystal - “She’s strong, but we’re stronger,” he said, calm and confident and Rin nodded, believing him.

He was starting to get really tired, but he couldn’t give up! So he yelled to keep himself going and wake himself up - he didn’t yell any words anymore, he just yelled, and put his heart in it, and when the yell ran out he took a breath and yelled again! The silver light grew even brighter, so he kept doing it, and Cardinal King’s hold on his shoulder grew tighter and he could feel a shift in the pressure on the back of his hand, but he just wanted this monster gone! He wanted his old life back! He had wanted so bad to have someone to protect, but now that he did he just wanted to go back to when there was no need to protect her or anyone else! He closed his eyes and yelled even louder, yelling the monster back into the dark or, better yet, out into the light to disappear like shadows do! And then the monster shouted, too, her voice high pitched and creepy and Cardinal King said something but he yelled louder to drown her out ---

And then he felt… weird. Like he was light -- too light. He had stopped shouting but didn’t remember when that happened, and even though he was really light his legs couldn’t hold him anymore and he started to fall. Cardinal King caught him and the crystal and laid him down, and he tried to say he was fine and he could still fight her, his mouth only moved enough to mumble and he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore, but he heard it:

“You did it, Rin. You blew her away.” 

He did it? … he did it. They were safe. So he could sleep, right?

“I’ll take care of the rest, so you stay here, ok?”

“I’ll stay with Little Lord!” Gaea said, and he felt his furry form nuzzle close to his neck, all soft and warm, and he couldn’t fight off needing to sleep any longer. “You did it, Little Lord, just like you said. You’re a hero, a Knight, just like them!” Gaea said, and he might have said more, but Rin couldn’t hear him after that; he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> psst i originally wrote this as chapter 12 and had a crisis as to which should be 12 and considered blending them but /shrug ANYWAY I hope Rin's perspective was a fun one XD


	14. Reprisal (pt 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mamoru goes to face off against Metallia alone, but without backup or powers at his disposal, what can he do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had the hardest time coming up with a name for this chapter :/ BUT THEN I FOUND THIS NAME AND IT WORKS \o/

**Chapter 14: Reprisal (pt 1)**

Metallia was gone, but not quite defeated. As Rin shouted down the fear in his heart, a second energy source was added to that of the Silver Crystal and the light flew back over the little prince and transformed him, but Mamoru didn’t think the kid had realized it, and even in the rush of the moment, as sheer power was thrown from the crystal and it took almost everything Mamoru had to keep it contained and focused out towards the creature that brandished Metallia’s staff, he hoped that this transformation would not be something Rin would become overly familiar with in whatever aftermath of this battle followed. Beyond the warmth and sparkling energy that accompanied the shift in energy, he could only sense that the uniform was a miniature version something like his but in deep green and with a full cape - something, then, like what they wore in their past lives rather than what he and his friends wore now. But the transformation didn’t last long, and neither had Tethys; the ball of light all but swallowed her, and as he squinted towards he could see the skeletal form of the giant disintegrating as Rin’s power overcame its own.

Rin sleeping peacefully, the silver crystal tucked in beside him with a talking kitten snuggled in close, he jumped carefully from the flat platform onto the crystal warped like frozen waves and, in the near-dark, he strode over to the remaining edge of the roof, paused, and placed his hand on the surface to make sure what he had seen was correct. The psychometry reading shot back signs of life below him, behind him, even directly below his feet in the form of Helio’s glow, but so, too, was there a dark pulse of power further out in the city, amidst the destruction the fight had caused. Metallia’s staff was not destroyed, and so neither was it. He could not give it the chance to escape, not after so much had been sacrificed to take it down. So he jumped after it. 

It was the longest fall of his life - the tower was taller even than Tokyo Tower, and the wind rushing past him made his heart beat faster, but he trusted in the power that came with his transformation, and the half-cape at his shoulder, and believed he would survive the fall. What he would do after would take more stubborn belief and less logic than he could normally muster, because he knew Metallia was still alive as well as he knew that he may not have the power at his disposal to eradicate it. 

As he fell he heard a sharp noise and looked just in time to see he was passing by an open enclosed garden on the tower, recognizing quickly the similarities to where Endymion waited and that Priest Helios was there, rushing towards the edge as he fell past him, and his thoughts quickly entered Mamoru’s head. In their conversation he quickly explained what happened: Rin had fought, he was safe but had passed out and there was a cat with him now. The Queen had acted as a conduit and was in the room of prayer. He had not figured out how to unlock the sun’s protection. Metallia was still alive, but he would ensure its end, somehow. Their conversation ended before he hit the ground, his cape slowing his descent the closer he got, giving him more time to look out over the destruction wrought. Crystal Tokyo was in bad shape when they arrived, but now it was truly in ruins, the blast from the battle having flattened buildings north of the palace and littered the streets with debris so deep and jagged it was like he fell into an ocean-like junkyard, and the thick dust in the air scattered light so thoroughly that when finally he did hit the ground, landing with bended knees and falling to his hands anyway, he couldn’t see the ground two feet from his face. 

But he could feel it: the malevolent pulse of Metallia’s lifeforce, and so staggered to his feet regardless, coughing up dust as he held his hand out in front of him and called on the thinnest whisper of power, just enough to get his hand to glow, and followed that faint light towards what remained of Metallia. He was careful to conserve what energy he could, knowing Endymion would still be keeping track, and knowing, too, that the King recognized as well as he did that Metallia was still alive and potentially dangerous. He needed to figure out how to handle this final step. He knew he would need to destroy the staff and whatever essence remained, but how could he do that if he barely had enough in him to make it there? 

Sol Apollo. Protection of the sun. They had briefly touched on Roman mythology at one point, attempting to study whatever they could to get an upper hand on the senshi when they were still under Diana’s control, but all he could remember was that Sol was said to be the god of the sun, and so was used as a scientific descriptor for anything sun-related: the reason the Solar System was called what it was, for example, but as there was no “Sailor Sol” they didn’t look that much farther into it. He recognized the name Apollo from Greek mythology and that connection again to the sun, but that’s as far as that went. And Helios had commented that, back then, a lot of people were named after the gods so it hadn’t been a big deal that his name was Helios, the original titan of the sun, and that could very well be the case here, but with evidence of an actual Chronus… There could be something more to it. 

As he walked, careful as he could but still managing to trip and slide on the rough material that was similar to concrete that jutted up at every angle to inadvertently block his path, concentrating on keeping the energy built up in his hand steady enough to light the way but not strong enough to pull more power than he had, he tried to call on the crystal within him for that extra protection, for some additional reservoir of energy, but in splitting his attention he started to fail in all aspects: he fell four times and lose his light twice before he had to admit defeat. He was too tired to attempt anything like that now, and as he had no indication in the attempt that there even  _ was  _ additional protections in place, he knew he had to come up with something else. 

But then there it was. He had reached the center of a blast zone and lying discarded in the center was the staff. It had returned to its original size, fit for humans rather than giants, and it glowed faintly from within with deep red light. 

He could blast it with Golden Crystal energy? … but when he had used his powers at Metallia’s base, it had just drained him. He didn’t know how that worked, and he was not going to be the one to power it up again. The Silver Crystal had hurt it, but neither of its bearers here was able to use it now. ... _ Usako. _ His chest ached thinking of her, and he had to stamp down the worry and guilt and fear because he could not avoid this now. She had to be on that asteroid; they’d be able to find her. They had to be able to find her. 

_ But could they find her without Metallia’s help? That space rock was one in millions, and small - potentially too small to find without Metallia’s help.  _ But they had Beryl again; Beryl could help them find it --  _ but how was he so sure Beryl had survived the encounter at the pole?  _ ...Without a soul crystal to sense, neither he nor Endymion could be certain that the Kings had extracted Metallia from Beryl or that Beryl perished and Metallia escaped.  _ It could be that the only one that could find Serenity again was Metallia, and if he destroyed the staff, Metallia would not be able to help him. Metallia would get its wish to destroy all those in the White Moon Line, in his time, at least, and Serenity would be left to perish all alone out there. _

He staggered forward automatically. He couldn’t let that happen to her. He’d spare Metallia, make it tell him where her asteroid was, and they’d rescue Usagi and destroy it from there.  _ He could keep it under control. It was weak, he would force it to obey.  _ And then they’d eliminate it and go back home.  _ … where another Metallia was lurking in the outer system, dormant, prepared to attack again in their own future. Maybe he should keep this Metallia alive and under control, and use it to find the Metallia in their time so that they could eliminate it before it became a problem for them.  _ That would save them the trouble later - the trouble and the destruction because while they know now that it’s out there, they would never be able to foresee when it would awaken. Even as strong as they were now, it’s put people in danger, and who knew how many lives it had already cost this era, so what could it do to his own? _ If he could gain control over Metallia now and force it to take him to Serenity, he could keep control over it - he could make it serve him to that end: take it to the past, lead them to where its past self was imprisoned, and they could destroy them both there, with one dormant and the other weakened. _

_ Keeping it alive now only made sense.  _ He was almost there; the fight was already over. Rin defeated it,  _ he was just taking it prisoner. _ He knelt and reached for it, feeling the energy pulsing off of it, and made sure to release the energy in his hand so as not to inadvertently give it any power it could use to resist him. His finger touched it and in a rush of psychometric memories and emotions there was also a purely physical collision and he was thrown backward, the staff out of reach.

_ “What the HELL do you think you’re doing?!” _ Helios yelled at him, awkwardly picking himself up from the ground nearby, his wings folding ungainly as he rolled up off of his side and stood on his four legs, the appendages unfurling to help him keep his balance as he stared him down, garnet eyes whirling at him, golden horn glowing faintly. 

Still reeling, he pushed himself up off his back, resting on his elbows as his head swam --

> _ It had been born there, in the absence of Light on the sun. Without a guardian, the star became the perfect home for it, and it grew comfortably there, biding its time and growing its strength, surveying its new dominion possessively. One planet teemed with life, and its moon hosted a second civilization, though… a bright collection of sailor crystals resided there. They would need to be dealt with, but given enough time and study, Metallia knew it could coil its way into the life-bearing planet and expel the other from its domain. Then it would rule unencumbered, unchecked, and all life in the system would be under its command. But while it grew and bided its time, it witnessed an uncommon event happening on that moon, and in doing so, it brought upon its own demise. _
> 
> _ For in gazing out at that Moon as new life came to it,  _ something  _ gazed back. It recognized it. They stared at one another across the vast distance between them, and the notion it had of possessing the new child and taking over that sailor-crystal rich kingdom left as quickly as it came. The Watcher was a warrior, and it knew it was there. Any move it made would be dealt with. Its only choice of action was to hide away within the star and bide its time -- _
> 
> _ Only the Warrior roused that Shining Queen “Serenity” and her damnable crystal drew it forcefully, painfully, from its hiding place within the Sun. They fought, but it was no match - it was still young, still gathering its power, and the silver crystal’s light was freezing and absolute. It would have perished then, but the Queen showed “mercy”, declaring there would be no death on the day of her daughter’s birth, and instead Metallia was banished to the furthest reaches of what was to be its kingdom, locked away for eternity.  _
> 
> _ Or so they thought. _

_ But it would be good, now. It’s been beaten, it’s weak, powerless. It will listen to him and obey him - it will lead him to the Princess. _

\-- “I need to use it to find Serenity,” he said, blinking slowly to bring the world back into focus as he pushed himself up further, his eyes finding and reaching for the staff --

_ “Serenity?!” _ Helios returned testily, and then flung himself into his shoulder to knock him to the ground again,  _ “Mamoru, it’s  _ **possessing** _ you!” _ Helios mentally hissed, standing over him and blowing air out of his nose so strongly it blew Mamoru’s hair back. In a burst, Helios grew larger, and placed a hoof on him to hold him down,  _ “Burn it out! Don’t let it take root within you! Usagi-chan is lost but if you accept its help you’d be dooming her and everything else here  _ and  _ back in our own time!” _ Helios shook him, and… he made sense?  _ “I get that she’s your weakness but don’t let it use her so easily!” _

_ But how could he hope to find her without Metallia? The High Priest could be right, but in either case, she’d die; if he accepted Metallia he would still have a fighting chance at overcoming it. And it’s weakened, it couldn’t be possessing him -  _

**_“Mamoru!”_ ** Helios snapped.

This Helios wasn’t the High Priest; not yet, anyway. Those thoughts…? He shook his head - those thoughts weren’t his. Hadn’t been his. Probably not since seeing the staff. He had just been considering how poor his concentration was, and then he went and fell for it anyway. “Thanks, Helios,” he said, and Helios lifted his hoof to let him sit up, though the unisus stayed positioned between him and the staff. “I didn’t think --”

_ “Yeah, you weren’t thinking,” _ Helios cut him off to agree,  _ “But we’ve gotta act and we’ve gotta act fast.” _

_ It doesn’t matter, _ the invasive thoughts snapped irritably,  _ Regardless of what you do to me, that White Moon brat’s fate is sealed -- _

_ “Don’t listen to it!” _ Helios snapped again, staring back at him, eyes narrowing,  _ “Your eyes glaze over when you listen to it. Block it out entirely, it’s bound to be speaking in lies anyway! Now, what’s the plan? How are we going to kill it?” _

“I don’t know if my powers work on it,” Mamoru said, pulling himself back from the staff before standing, keeping his eyes on the pulsing weapon, “but Endymion can redirect energy to me as a last resort: he’d have to pull it out of somewhere and that involves sacrifices.” 

Helios’s eyes narrowed on him, then he shifted his attention to the staff and agreed,  _ “Last resort then. What are the others?” _

“The Kings are down: unconscious in the north pole, but they were able to hurt her before. They and the senshi -!” he dropped back down, placing both hands flat on the dirt, closed his eyes, and sent out a wave of energy in an attempt to find them, to see if the senshi were still here. If they were, Helios could call them here and they could blast Metallia apart -- _ but they weren’t. _ They weren’t at the Pole anymore. His friends’ were placed closer to Endymion, a reading he could barely get with multiple attempts due to all the interference Endymion’s Golden Crystal generated, but the bright primary glows of the senshi were altogether gone -

_ “They had their own plans,” _ Helios stated,  _ “We need to -- Watch out!” _

The staff glowed brightly and  _ burst _ , the crystalline orb shattering to send shards of thick glass in every direction. Mamoru covered his eyes but could still feel the cloud of malevolence that erupted up and out of the debris like a rocket into the sky. As he dropped his arm to look up after it, Helios had already grown to full size and maneuvered his wing to give him access, and so for the second time in his life he jumped on Helios’s back and Helios flew after it. It was easier this time around, not having to worry about two extra passengers, but while they were not physically there the worry was still in place: she was missing, and Metallia’s cloud was now streaking back towards the Crystal Palace. He could only hope that Priest Helios had taken the kid back inside and --  _ Priest Helios _ . They couldn’t operate in the same space! How much further could they fly before they were too close?! 

Helios abruptly wheeled and Mamoru held on tight, maneuvering to keep Helios balanced despite the sharp inexplicable bank, but the immediate iridescent wall of power between Metallia and the Crystal Palace served explanation enough. The mist threw itself against the wall in an eruption of rainbow waves from the point of impact, but, unlike the burst it had thrown when joined with Tethys that had crashed through the first wall, this time Metallia could not cross. As it tried thrice more, each time as ineffective as the last, Mamoru looked around in the split second of light for something to help, something to capture it even if he could not defeat it, but he found nothing. Maybe what he had was enough? 

Helios sped off, mimicking Metallia’s movement as what remained of the darkness drifted to try another angle, and Mamoru motioned to buildings on the eastern side that were still standing. Helios sped for one in front of Metallia’s trajectory, staying well out of the creature’s way in hopes that it would forget they were there. He touched down and Mamoru dismounted immediately, his boots skidding on the blackened, sooty roof, and rushed to its edge, eyes tracing the dark mist amidst the rainbow explosions of light, closed his eyes briefly and held out his hands; the crystal appeared, shining with soft inner golden light that seemed to gather at the points of its new lotus-blossom shape, and Helios drew in a breath like a hiss behind him. 

_ “It is not ideal,”  _ Helios stated grimly,  _ “But necessary. The energy the Priest has amassed is not endless. Whatever is sacrificed, it will be in the name of this Earth and its future safety -” _

“I won’t use more than I have,” Mamoru stated, closing his eyes again and concentrating on throwing his psychometric readings wide; he had to find it. He had seen it once before - that glimmer off of something solid within the staff; it had to be Metallia’s power gem. If he could find out exactly where it was and blast just at it - shatter just  _ it _ instead of focusing on the entire diffuse mass of mist, maybe he had enough to do that. The difficulty was in finding it. Psychometry had only worked with things touching some sort of surface on Earth, and Metallia was floating above, disconnected; he had to try to use the psylocation some other way --

Helios moved to place himself in front of Mamoru and Mamoru opened his eyes at the distraction, fearing Metallia might have noticed them and what he intended, or that Metallia was moving on, but Metallia was continuing what it had been: attacking the wall at different points, throwing itself against the defenses in hopes of finding a weakness or exhausting the power that kept it standing. Following Helios’s horn, though, he found what the unisus had picked up on: a shooting star. Bright, burning white as it ripped across the sky, the star seemed to be heading straight for them from the west, and rather than arcing overhead it just kept coming for them. It even started to slow, the glow darkening to individual pinpoints of multicolored light - blue, red, yellow, green, and white - that seemed to explode apart as it got closer still --

_ “Mamoru!” _ Helios shouted in warning, but he had already taken the crystal within him again and prepared to jump aside to dodge whatever it was when something in his heart told him to not move - just to brace himself. Eyes wide, he trusted his instinct… 

And caught the tiny falling star with the sharp white glow.

...except it wasn’t all that tiny. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little short, sorry! ;D Combine it with (Pt 2) to make a full length chapter, but we've got a sidetrack to investigate!


	15. Believe

**Chapter 15: (You Got to) Believe (In the Power of Love♪)**

She wasn’t a damsel in distress. Not anymore. She was  _ Princess Sailor Moon, _ and Jewel Tiara before that. She’d faced dangers, fought monsters, performed daring acrobatics to varying amounts of success, and looked  _ seriously cool _ while doing it. She’d been brainwashed and recovered. She’d cried over the loss of loved ones her mind couldn’t remember but her heart couldn’t forget, and when she had the opportunity to bring them back  _ she brought them back. _ She lost her power but she  _ found it _ again and now she could defend herself and the people she loved with it. She may be comparatively “new” to this hero business against to the hazy memories of her time as a pampered princess, but she much preferred this life of being able to stand for what she believed in and put her power where her mouth was to taking things easy and daydreaming about love all day long. … though that was fun and she’d really like to return to that again when they went back. Only now with  _ pocky  _ and  _ video games _ and  _ manga _ and her friends by her side and her boyfriend living on the same planet. She had died before to save her Prince and he had done the same not three days ago, and when he somehow came back she swore that this time they’d  _ live _ their happy ever after  _ and she meant it. _

So she was choked out in an alternate dimension by a corrupted fairy and woke up all alone, so what? She was  _ Princess Sailor Moon, _ and a sore throat wouldn’t stop her! So she was in a creepy castle with disturbing rock formations and an unknown source of electricity that made the walls glow like they were either on fire or dripping with blood? That wouldn’t slow her down! She was  _ Princess. Sailor. Moon. _ Mamochan said that “Queen Beryl” wouldn’t hurt him, so she just had to figure out where she was and get back to him and  _ not _ think about everything Pluto had said about being lost in the time stream and how that could mean being lost forever because  _ that wasn’t how their story was going to end, and she had a say in that.  _ Princess. Sailor. Moon. So what if her footsteps echoed eerily off the walls and the shadows jumped out of nowhere to scare her so bad that she screamed? They were only little screams. Of surprise. Not fear. And the chills that ran up and down her spine? Of  _ anticipation, _ definitely not fright. She was going to make it back. She would find him and take him back to Crystal Tokyo, and blast Metallia right out of the future and then they’d go home and  _ they would go on a date. _ She just had to get out of here, wherever ‘here’ was. 

She found herself where she had started and allowed herself a moment of exasperation, but only a moment, because she was Princess Sailor Moon, and she had something this Metallia wouldn’t expect:  _ arcade know-how. _ She took a moment, closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and recalled an important memory:

> _ “You’ve gotta think this one through, Usagi-chan!” Motoki chided, leaning over the game console and pointing at the Labyrinth screen as her character respawned. “If you’re stuck in a maze, keep turning with one wall - pretend you have your hand on it, and eventually you’ll find the way out!” _

Another point to video games!  _ And her mother said they were useless, ha! _ Usagi-chan dutifully stuck one hand out to touch the wall on her left and started walking, keeping her head up and her eyes open. This wasn’t so bad, now that she was used to the horror-game aesthetic. Thinking of it as an arcade game definitely made it even easier for her,  _ Princess Sailor Moon, _ to work her way through. She opened doors as she came to them, just in case they led to an obviously marked exit, but most of them were just empty rooms with dark windows, which was only a little unsettling because when she left Crystal Tokyo it had been midafternoon, but then she could be anywhere on Earth right now, right? … But she’d make it back to the Time Stream, no problem! She’d find a way! She was Princess Sailor Moon! She’d --

Okay that room was  _ really creepy _ what was with that weird stomach-looking rock structure and that coffin in the middle of the room?! She quickly closed the door with a totally brave expression on her face and totally normally and coolly kept walking. Okay maybe a little faster, but only because she was in a hurry. 

It was weird for something like this to be empty, so she kept on alert, ready to blast any monsters away with a flick of her trusty wand! … but she found no one. Which meant nothing - not that Metallia’s army was definitely heading for Crystal Tokyo and that’s why the place was empty. … she started running. She hated running, but she was a superhero and running was sometimes just part of the gig. Ahead, bright light beamed into the hallway and she slowed, hesitant to see what fresh haunted-house sideshow awaited her, but she was Princess Sailor Moon, and a little glowing ghost display wasn’t going to --

Only it wasn’t a glowing ghost display.

Or anything else she might have imagined to find in this creepy, empty place, where she was, all alone. 

It was just sunlight. 

From the sun.

That floated not in a bright blue sky, but against a backdrop of inky darkness and stars.

She swallowed and rested her hands on the lip of the window ledge for support. She knew this sight. She knew it just as well as she knew the light of that half-illuminated blue marble floating out there in front of her, though seeing its little white companion from this vantage point was new. 

Her vision swam around that little blue marble and it felt like she was weightless, all sensation leaving her legs and arms as she stared at the sight and the meaning of what she saw threw itself against her mind seemingly without purchase:  _ She wasn’t on Earth anymore. She was off Earth. She wasn’t on the Moon. She was in  _ space.  _ She was… in  _ space.  _ There wasn’t… How was she going to get back home from here? _ How was she going to keep the promise she made herself? How was she going to …

She gasped in a breath as she started to see stars, realizing she had stopped breathing, and in taking in that lungful of air she set a determined line to her lips. She just would, that’s all. Looking out of the window, she craned her neck to see if there was someplace she could go to get a better picture of what was going on, and spotted some sort of room ahead with more windows. She’d go there. And she went there. And she found there that… it was just a wide open room, like a dome, with windows in all directions and a creepy little throne in the center. She ignored the chair and moved instead to the windows - half in light and half in dark as the space rock drifted straight for Earth. 

Okay. How did she used to sneak away to Earth in her past life? Her arms crossed, she closed her eyes and bowed her head, her finger tapping her bicep as she thought back… she remembered a viewing room, and the screens, and how handsome he looked on them and --  _ focus! _ \-- and she’d just… prayed, hadn’t she? Or wished? To see him and his Earth up close. She opened her eyes with a little bit of a frown and stepped forward towards the bank of windows with determination, took another deep breath, closed her eyes again but this time with her hands clasped in front of her, and  _ concentrated _ on her wish: She wanted to go to Earth. She wanted to be back with him. She wanted to follow her heart back there. … nothing happened. She peeked just to make sure. And then she doubled down - it was pretty much exactly the same wish she had back then, right?! Only this time it had a ticking time element, just like it had… that day. 

What if, back then, it was a combination of things that had allowed her to travel between the Moon and Earth, the key word there being  _ Moon? _ Maybe the Tower of Prayer had heard her wish and granted it, reacting to the silver crystal? Without a Tower of Prayer could she even… She had to get off this thing. She had to get back there - she had a new life, with him and their friends - and  _ her friends.  _ She wasn’t going to just let it go because she was stuck on a rock in space! In the future. Alone. With the Earth so far away it was only the size of her fist - closer than it had been to the Moon, but still impossibly far away. 

So maybe she cried a little. Crying helped put things back in perspective. And even though right now the  _ perspective _ was that Earth was  _ in the window _ , she was Princess Sailor Moon, and she’d think of something just as soon as she finished crying --

But then the room suddenly filled with an almost audible  _ pop _ and subsequent burst of energy, and she whipped around, wand in hand and at the ready - “Moon ---”

“Serenity!” Jupiter called in absolute relief, and her legs went weak. Sniffling, she released the wand and wiped her eyes and  _ ran for them.  _ Her friends. They had come for her. Jupiter caught her and held her tight, and she felt Mercury’s gloved hand on her shoulder, and a soft pull on one pigtail from Mars, and she nearly cried again. Mercury fell away and Venus was in her place at her side, and she reached to pull her into the hug, too. 

“You came!” she cried out obviously.

“Of course we did,” Venus returned softly, pulling back from the hug to pat her on her head between her buns. 

“We’re in  _ space,” _ was all she could say, still one thousand percent relieved to see them and one hundred percent unsure of how they got there. 

Jupiter chuckled and smiled down at her, “That’s why it took us a while.”

“Venus,” Mercury beckoned, and her golden-haired guardian disentangled herself to move to Mercury and look at the screen of her little computer, the pair of them talking quietly.

“It might have taken longer if it weren’t for her,” Jupiter said, drawing Usagi’s attention back and following her gaze towards Mars. She was about to fawn all over Mars and her ‘intuition’ for being so amazing as to sense her out  _ in the stars, _ but Mars seemed to sense that, and before Usagi could make a move she nodded down to her open, palm-up hand, where a tiny woman stood with her hands clasped before her and her head down in regret - “She wasn’t in control of herself, Serenity; she’s sorry for --”

_ “You’re okay!” _ Usagi burst, rushing over only to pause uselessly -- she and Beryl hadn’t been on any sort of terms before and after what just happened she doubted the fairy wanted her to manhandle her no matter how much  _ she _ wanted to manhandle her. Beryl’s head snapped up in confusion, her eyes narrowing suspiciously and Usagi quickly corrected - “You  _ are _ okay, aren’t you? Are you alright? You’re not -- you’re not  _ red and pointy _ anymore, so that means you’re back to normal?”

“Told you,” Mars commented cooly, “You can maroon her on an asteroid and she’ll  _ still  _ forgive you.”

Beryl looked up at Mars, and then back at her, and in a tiny, cross little voice, she said, “I’m sorry I tried to kill you. I wasn’t myself.”

“And you neglected to mention that this asteroid is on a collision course with Earth,” Venus piped in, firmer in her anger, and immediately Mars and Jupiter reached out to take either of Usagi’s hands, both of them reaching for the other pair, but Venus made no move, looking from Mars to Jupiter before to her as she continued, “Mercury’s making the calculations.” 

“What calculations?” she asked, definitely not thinking about what might have happened if they hadn’t found her in time, her hands holding tightly to theirs. 

No one answered her until Mercury made the announcement. “Scans show that with the mass, makeup, and velocity of this asteroid, when it hits, it will be bad. Some of the ice and rock will burn up in the atmosphere, but not all.”

“How bad?” Venus asked.

Mercury closed her computer and avoided Usagi’s gaze. “Extinction level. Climate changing. A new ice age when everything settles down.”

A new  _ ice age? _

Metallia wasn’t just going to leave her on this rock prison - she was going to  _ smash the rock prison into Earth and hurt everyone?! _ Maybe she wasn’t the best student, but she  _ knew _ what happened to the dinosaurs! She couldn’t help but look at Beryl for an explanation, but the fairy looked almost as shocked as Usagi felt. She hadn’t known. Okay. But now what? Only, “now”, Mercury and Venus were taking Jupiter and Mars’s hand, Venus and Mars linking fingers with their thumbs making a little loop around Beryl, who - again - looked as shocked as she was that this was happening. Power started to charge around them --

“Wait!” she cried, pulling her hands free to break the circle, “What is the plan?! How do we stop this?!”

Jupiter wouldn’t look at her, and Mercury’s expression was sympathetic, but neither of them spoke as Venus emotionlessly replied, “We don’t. We go home.”

“We  _ don’t?!” _ Usagi repeated, aghast, and stepped further back, out of their reach. “It’s going to  _ hurt people!  _ Millions of people -  _ Billions! _ We can’t just let this happen!”

“There’s nothing we can do, Serenity. It’s out of our hands -”

_ “U-sa-gi.” _ She interrupted, swallowing past the hurt and betrayal she felt on behalf of their own  _ planet _ to remind them of that fact. “It’s  _ Tsukino Usagi, _ now, remember?” she continued, being as gentle as she could in the face of the actions they were willing to take, trying to keep in mind how afraid and unsure they had been around her before, how they had apologized - openly or just through their expressions - on the rooftop. How they hadn’t wanted her to follow Mamoru and Rin, but she had sworn before she jumped through the time door that she would be careful, and how she had promised them they’d all make it back to their time and go out for ice cream together; how since then they had looked at her indulgently, in that same way they had during the Silver Millennium, or guiltily, like she was this tragic figure they had failed. Venus treated her like glass, despite her transformation, and while her greatest fear in their transformations had not come true and they were still themselves, part of her wished that they had forgotten everything again, so that they would know her only as Usagi or  _ Princess Sailor Moon, _ without all the baggage Princess Serenity represented to them. 

But that wouldn’t be solved in a speech, or in an hour, or a day, or maybe even weeks. Years. But they didn’t have that time now. There wasn’t time to let them heal and let them treat her as a helpless doll in the interim; this asteroid was crashing into Earth,  _ Rin’s _ Earth,  _ any Earth, _ and she had to try to stop that. And really she only had one option to try, and as this option didn’t exactly  _ need _ a Tower of Prayer, she was fairly certain she could pull it off. “And maybe it’s not out of my hands. You guys don’t have to stay with me - Thank you for finding me, really, but I’m going to try to stop this.”

“Serenity,” Venus entreated, but Usagi ignored her, walking around her friends towards those windows again, swallowing as she looked out and through and wondered just how in the world the Silver Crystal could solve this problem. “Serenity!” She needed to put the brakes on this - like, slow it down. Drag it backward. But the crystal only pushed forward…

“Usagi-chan,” Jupiter called, and she looked back for that. The brunette smiled, releasing Mercury’s hand, and corrected, as she walked forward,  _ “Princess Sailor Moon, _ I want to help.” She put her hand on her shoulder and leaned to look out the window. 

And while there wasn’t a solution yet, she felt more confident about it with her there.

“...Me, too,” Mercury said, and before she had even crossed the space, her visor was out and her hands were flying across her mini computer, symbols parading across both screens, and Usagi beamed and leaned over to most unhelpfully drape herself affectionately over Ami-chan’s shoulders. “Ser--  _ Usagi-chan,” _ Mercury gently berated, and Usagi stopped nuzzling her to let her keep working. 

“I can’t do much about this,” Beryl unexpectedly said, hopping up to fly over to them, hovering nearer to Jupiter than to her, but obviously on their side. “But I can’t just stand by and let this happen to Earth.” 

“Happy to have you,” Usagi grinned, and though she hoped two more would join them, she resisted the urge to turn around, not wanting to pressure them further into this. She wasn’t going to hold back or stand aside just because they decided to join her; she was taking this future into her own hands, and while she wanted them to be with her, she wasn’t going to fall back. 

“We’re in, too.” Mars stated, and she turned then to see the pair of them coming towards her, Mars pulling Venus along. “She didn’t mean to suggest she was alright with leaving Earth to this,” Mars started, and looked pointedly at Venus. 

“Maybe I was,” Venus suggested quietly, “Or I would be.” She met her gaze steadily, though her brows furrowed, upset, as she continued. “I lost you once before, and the second time I almost killed you myself. I can’t --” she caught herself, “If it means protecting you, Ser--  _ Usagi-chan, _ I’d make myself okay with it.”

“Don’t,” Usagi replied simply, taking Venus’s empty hand. “Don’t be okay with that. We should never be okay with that. Fight beside me, and together we can beat anything - I just  _ know _ we can. The Silver Crystal is mine now, and with you guys with me, nothing is impossible.” She swung Venus’s hand in hers, “And besides,” she haughtily encouraged, “Nothing bad’s going to happen to me: I promised ice cream when we get back and I’m not losing out on ice cream.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mercury asked suddenly, and Usagi kept hold of Venus’s hand as she moved over to try to see what she had found, nodding affirmatively even when she couldn’t make heads or tails of all those numbers and polygons. “Alright. Aiming the crystal right at Earth would slow it down, but decreasing the distance would only increase the gravitational pull and what could be avoided today would only become tomorrow’s problem. Instead, you’re going to blast that way,” she said, pointing out beside the Earth, “and slow the asteroid down radially while increasing its counterclockwise momentum to put it into orbit. With luck, the orbit will stabilize and become a miniature moon.”

“Without luck?” Mars prompted. 

“It… will be a problem that our future counterparts will have time enough to solve before things get dicey.” 

Right. Just a little luck then, and this will all be over. With a thought, the Crescent Moon Wand appeared in her hand, and she flipped it  _ coolly _ before catching it again in a ready pose and pointing it in the direction Mercury had indicated. She took a breath --- Mercury adjusted her, standing behind her to line up the Silver Crystal precisely, and she released her breath and waited for her patiently, trying her best to keep the new position steady and eyed a background star to keep track of. A Lucky Star, that’s what it was. A tap on her shoulder and she took in her breath again and called out what came naturally - “Moon Crystal Power!”

And suddenly she was surrounded in chaos. Energy ripped through the air, destroying the building around them, sending debris flying out into space and if she hadn’t been gritting her teeth and breathing to try to keep control, she would’ve freaked out about losing air. The force almost threw her backward, but she fought it, squinted against the bright light, struggled to keep the wand tip pointed at her lucky star, but her boots slid back on the rock and her arms buckled despite her. But she groaned and pushed through, straightening her arms and breathing through the beating of her heart and the painful drain on her body and tried to focus on their goal: slow the asteroid, get it into orbit! Protect everyone! But then the ground around her started to crack and her heart jumped in her chest in worry for them - should she have asked them to go?!

But then one gloved hand covered hers on the wand and crossed behind her back, and her gaze snapped up to see Venus standing beside her, staring forward - “Venus Star Power!” - she cried defiantly, and the topaz gem in her tiara glowed brightly and power rushed into the wand from her hand, lending gold to the Silver Crystal’s light. Jupiter followed, then Mars, and then Mercury - four hands covering her two on the wand, four new colors arcing into the silver crystal’s blast, and while the air around them whipped and tore at them and pieces of the asteroid broke away, the area immediately surrounding them was stable. With her friends’ hands over hers, it was easier to keep her arms straight and the wand lined up, but with each passing second it got harder and harder to keep going, but  _ she would do it. _ She had to do it. She wouldn’t fail in this - she wouldn’t fail Earth, she wouldn’t fail her friends, and she wouldn’t fail  _ herself!  _

So what if it hurt to breathe, and everything ached so much it made her want to cry? She was Princess Sailor Moon, and she had her friends by her side and a planet to save. And they’d save it. ...and they’d live, right? Right. No dying. Ice cream. They were going to have ice cream and she’d tease Mako-chan about Motoki again. 

Venus buckled first, and her heart pounded painfully in panic as Jupiter followed suit, then Mars - the three of them still reaching up despite falling to their knees. Tears flew back like her twintails. This had to work. They had to be safe. They had to! “Ten seconds more!” Mercury declared, as she, too, fell to her knees. They were all still holding on, and in fear Usagi gathered her strength and stepped forward, breaking their hold on the wand and counted down the seconds despite the general outcry. She fell, too,  _ but not until it hit ten. _

When she cut off the flow of energy, she just let herself fall backward, unfolding her legs from an awkward position beneath her to try to catch her breath, looking up at the constellations above them. “See?” she said between draws of breath in the sudden silence that followed, “Everything’s fine. And we saved the world.” Weakly, she lifted her arm in a fist pump. 

“You idiot,” Mars panted with halfhearted annoyance from somewhere to her right. She let her arm fall limply in that general direction and landed on something soft. Hahahaha. 

“Ice cream should be on the house,” Jupiter stated dully - but Usagi didn’t hold it against her. She was tired; it wasn’t easy to sound pumped up when you’re tired. 

There was a slight noise as Mercury picked herself back up into a sitting position and started typing away at her computer; Usagi rolled her head to see her better and wait out the verdict, already starting to feel a little better. “... it’ll do,” she declared, “the orbit should stabilize in a few days.”

“So Earth’ll have another moon?” Usagi asked, still prone, and Mercury nodded. “I vote we get to name it.”

Venus snickered, which made Usagi smile and offer a suggestion, “Planet Mint-ChocoChip.”

“You can’t name a moon “Planet” anything,” Mars chastised.

“Who’s going to object? We made it,” Jupiter defended.

“I object,” Mars said, sitting up.

Jupiter matched her position, “Well then what if we dropped “planet” and kept the flavor?”

“I object to the flavor, too.”

“Now you’re just being contrary.” 

“We could name it Usagi to keep with the legend?” Venus suggested, sitting up and looking slyly down at her. 

Usagi pouted at the prod, but considered. “That could be interesting…”

“And  _ vain,” _ Mars cut in, and Usagi pouted even harder in her general direction. 

“How about a compromise?” Mercury suggested, shakily standing. “Keep it in the myth but  _ not _ named after the titular animal.”

Jupiter got up and offered Venus a hand, suggesting as she did so, “Mochi?”

And Usagi was  _ in love~! _ “Mochi the Moon?!” she gushed, grabbing for Mars’s hand as Mars stood; her guardian in red high heels rolled her eyes before offering her a hand up. 

“Of course  _ you’d _ like it,” Rei-chan said, and winced before she braced herself as Usagi took full advantage of the offered hand. 

“Because it’s perfect! And it’s brown, right?” she looked at the ground beneath her feet and then at Mercury for confirmation even as she continued, “ChocoMochiMoon!!” Mars pressed her fingers to her forehead, but everyone  _ else _ looked happy for it so that would be their vote. Mochi the moon! The Moon, Mochi! “They could have ChocoMochiMoon festivals! With chocolate ice cream and chocolate-flavored mochi (of  _ course) _ and it’d be a school holiday and” -

-and Beryl appeared, and Usagi felt  _ terrible _ because she hadn’t considered what had happened to the little fairy when the room exploded. She didn’t look too ragged in appearance… but she wasn’t happy. Her smile fell, “What’s wrong?”

“You…” Beryl trailed off, looking away as she crossed her arms, but made no move to back off from where she hovered. “You stopped this, but Earth isn’t saved yet.” 

“What… do you mean?” Suddenly ChocoMochiMoon Matsuri was gone, and assumptions she hadn’t even realized she had made were up for grabs.

“Metallia is tenacious. It didn’t burn through Tethys as quickly as I thought it would; it got to Crystal Tokyo; the Maenads told me that the young prince put up a fight, but Mamoru reported it survived even that final blast.” - Mamoru? He was free of the time stream, then? But Rin’s fighting?! And Metallia survived? Usagi’s hands curled nervously into fists at her chest - “His powers are exhausted. Their royalty are unable to help. If you have  _ anything _ left -”

His powers were exhausted? She swallowed nervously, suddenly back on that rooftop looking over the edge as the golden light stopped and Helios rushed in. Unable to help - she had been unable to help him at all, only managing to hold the door open so Helios could bring back his… She blinked determinedly, reached up and scrubbed the tear off her cheek.  _ Never again. _ And Rin had fought it? After being so afraid of it and afraid for his parents, he still had to face it? “I’ve got enough,” she stated, reaching for her friends’ hands with a set jaw. It had chased Rin into their time, brainwashed Beryl,  _ stolen Mamoru _ ,  _ marooned her on an asteroid set to crash into Earth and cause an extinction-level explosion,  _ fought a  _ little kid _ and still threatened more?!

Not while she’s around.

She’s  _ Princess Sailor Moon, _ the sailor-suited champion of Love and Justice, and she will  _ right wrongs and Triumph over Evil. _

And that meant Metallia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♪It gives meaning to each moment  
> it's what our hearts~ are all made of (just look inside!)♪


End file.
